MANILA, Philippines – “Don’t pin all the blame on me because we’re all liable.”

In his answer to a complaint by fellow barangay officials, Barangay San Lorenzo chair Joshua John Santiago brushed off the allegations of ordering the purchase of lampposts and waiting sheds worth P50 million, branding the claims as “unverified” and “malicious.”

He said the barangay council, which the complainants are part of, are also liable for the acquisition of street lights and commuter sheds. “The chair is not the barangay,” he said as he asked the Makati City council to dismiss the charges against him.

“Assuming that there is irregularity in the purchase of the subject lampposts, it is the complainants who should be liable considering that it was them who resolved the purchase of the lampposts,” Santiago said in a statement, a copy of which he furnished the Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net) late Wednesday night.

The case stemmed from the purchase of some 1,200 prefabricated lampposts worth P44 million for the barangay. Only 530 lampposts had so far been installed.

The complainants said the remaining 670 pieces are stored in a warehouse rented for P50,000 a month.

Also, the complainants questioned the purchase of materials for commuter sheds amounting close to P5.8 million and a donation to the Down Syndrome Association of the Philippines (DSAP).

The complainants – barangay kagawads Ernesto Moya, Guia Laguio-Flaminiano, Brigido Sibug, Jocelyn Hernandez and Norman Golez – are seeking Santiago’s preventive suspension and a thorough investigation on the purchases.

Santiago added that the acquisition of lampposts were authorized by a barangay resolution which the council passed in 2006, finding the accusation “malicious” for making it appear that he alone ordered the purchase of the streetlights.

Throughout his 20-page answer that the office of the city secretary received on Wednesday afternoon, Santiago kept on highlighting the barangay chair’s role as “merely a presiding officer of the council” and “the executive officer of the barangay.”

Santiago also said the acquisition of the lampposts went through the barangay bids and awards committee, whose members included complainants Sibug, Recto and Golez.

The committee recommended the approval of the contract to the barangay council, the barangay chair added.