Dir. Filemon “Yogi” Ruiz of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) 7 (right) lead a raiding team in serving a search warrant in Barangay Ermita last November and alleged that the barangay officials refused to cooperate with them to witness the inventory of evidence confiscated.
(CDN FILE PHOTO)
In a bid to have the order of preventive suspension against them reexamined, the officials of Barangay Ermita filed a motion for reconsideration before the Office of the Ombudsman yesterday afternoon.
Barangay Captain Felicisimo Rupinta lamented that they were not accorded due process when the Ombudsman issued their preventive suspension.
Also suspended were Marky Miral, Antonieto Flores, Ryan Jay Rosas, Aljo Tamundo, Domingo Ando, Maria Buanghug and Wilbert Flores. The preventive suspension is for a maximum of six months without pay or until the administrative adjudication of the case filed against them by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) 7 is terminated.
Allegations of lack of due process cropped up after Rupinta claimed that they never received a copy of the complaint and neither were they given an opportunity by the anti-graft office to answer the accusations against them.
Haste
In addition, Rupinta pointed out the alleged questionable haste with which the case filed against them by the PDEA-7 was acted upon by the Office of the Ombudsman, in contrast to the case that they earlier filed before the same office but which, to date, remains unresolved.
“Ni-file sila mga November ang PDEA,” he said.
“Karon naa nay decision, pila pa gani ka adlaw, wala pa’y duha ka buwan. Kami, ni-file mi, July 15 ni-file mi. Hangtod karon, wa pa’y imik ang kaso namo. Unsa man ni? Double standard ni? Pili-pilion? Magduda ta ba.” (PDEA filed last November. Now, they already have a decision even though barely two months had passed. We filed a case last July in the same office but until now, we haven’t heard anything about the case. How come? Is there a double standard? Do they just choose? It makes us doubt the process.)
Politically motivated
According to Rupinta, his doubts about the case being politically motivated will be confirmed if the ones who will be appointed by the Department of Interior and Local Government as temporary caretakers of the barangay are the ones he had defeated repeatedly in previous elections.
“Ang ebidensya sa akong duda nga matinuod, kung ang ipuli nila paglingkod ug kapitan, kadtong gipang-pildi nako kalima ka beses. So klaro kaayo nga aduna’y politika ang ilang gihimo. Kay ngano kani may ilang gi-puli, noh? I hope nga tinuod tong gisulti sa DILG nga sila’y mutudlo.”
PDEA
PDEA-7 director Yogi Filemon Ruiz filed three administrative complaints and one criminal complaint against all of the elected officials of Barangay Ermita, alleging that they did not cooperate with the drug enforcement agency during the service of a search warrant in the area.
Ruiz filed a criminal complaint for alleged violation of Article 233 (refusal of assistance) under the Revised Penal Code as well as administrative complaints for gross misconduct, gross neglect of duty, and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service at the Office of the Ombudsman in the Visayas.
PDEA raided a “shabu tiangge” located within Unit 2 of Carbon Public Market area last November 6.
The raid yielded P800,000 worth of suspected shabu as well as the arrest of Richard “Tata” Cañete, who allegedly maintained the shabu tiangge in Sitio Bato, Barangay Ermita.
In his complaint-affidavit, Ruiz said he instructed one of his officers to proceed to the barangay hall of Ermita to coordinate with the barangay police safety officer (BPSO) to implement a search warrant against Cañete as well as one Josephine Cuyno. They asked for the presence of the barangay captain or any of the barangay councilors to witness the search and inventory to be conducted, but none of them came.
Despite the fact that the barangay hall is only more or less 500 meters away from where the operation was conducted, Ruiz said none of the barangay officials they contacted arrived, which resulted in serious damage to the interest of the public and prosecution of the case, as well as “putting at risk the lives of the operating team while waiting for the elected barangay officials of Ermita to arrive”.
Denial
Rupinta denied the allegations saying that even if the raid was conducted on a Sunday, he sent a barangay councilman, the barangay administrator and the head of the
barangay tanods to check the ongoing operation in Sitio Bato at that time.
“But they just told our people that the barangay should not be involved since we are not part of the operation,” Rupinta said.
The village chief also said that in the five previous raids conducted in his barangay, PDEA would always visit their office first to coordinate with them. But at that time, he said they did not.
“I don’t know if this is their grand plan. It was done on a Sunday, which is a family day. But we were still at the barangay hall at that time. We were waiting for them,” Rupinta added.
He said this was the time when the Pacquiao–Vargas fight was on television and they all watched the fight at the barangay hall.
Rupinta explained that one of his councilors, who lives near the area where the buy-bust operation was being conducted, even went to the scene and asked how he could help, but he was shooed away and told that it was none of his concern.
To rebut claims of their non-cooperation with the PDEA and to prove how supportive they are of the government’s campaign against illegal drugs, Rupinta and his councilors brought along at least 83 reports of individuals from their area who were involved in shabu whom their barangay had helped put to jail.
The Ermita officials through their council, lawyer Paul Gino Lopez, cited as grounds of their urgent motion for reconsideration that mere allegations corroborated by no other evidence does not justify the preventive suspension order and that the order was a “blatant disregard” of the Constitutional requirement of due process of law.