Talisay City Councilor Socrates Fernandez’s decision to file charges against his successor, Mayor Johnny V. delos Reyes, only now when the election season is in full swing simply casts serious doubts not only on the credibility of his cases but on his integrity as well.
The former-mayor-turned-councilor has just suffered a personal loss when his son, Joavan Fernandez, was sentenced to 32 years in prison on charges of illegal detention of two vulcanizing shop employees.
Now Socrates and his political patron former Congressman Eduardo Gullas along with several Talisay City Hall employees and department heads are implicated in a P29-million disallowance case by the Commission on Audit (COA) which required them to refund the whole amount.
Having been suspended on a previous case for allowing his son Joavan to run off with a city government-issued vehicle, Socrates appealed to COA not to be included in the disallowance case since this would mean being deprived of his income.
While he isn’t destitute by any stretch of speculation, Socrates isn’t exactly rich by Filipino millionaire standards. Aside from funding appeals for his son, the councilor also has to rely on his income as councilor to support himself and his wife.
Though it looks like it, it’s too speculative to conclude that Fernandez is simply going for payback when he filed a complaint at the Ombudsman-Visayas and asked the anti-graft agency to probe the mayor on suspicion of dishonesty and misconduct.
Fernandez’s main bone of contention is JVR’s failure to fully disclose both the number of family members at his employ and the so-called “goodwill money” of P2.8 million that the mayor received without disclosing what it is (or was if he spent the money already).
While that bit about “goodwill money” looks suspiciously irregular, the mayor’s alleged failure to disclose the number of family members employed by the Talisay City government can be challenged in court.
It’s no secret that every local official in the country has more than a few family members employed directly in his or her office or some place lower or higher in the local government hierarchy.
One need only look at the Garcias, whose family members and relatives have spread through most of the inner workings of the provincial government, or even Davide, who also has many relatives found to be working at the Capitol or in some national government agency.
The government itself is an employment agency for families in power and their relatives — see the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao where the Ampatuans have ruled Maguindanao with an iron fist — which explains in part why government services and programs have benefited their allies and not their constituents.
That said, we can only wish that the Ombudsman investigate Socrates’s complaint and see if it does have anything worth pursuing.
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