MANILA, Philippines–A Makati City resident has asked the Supreme Court to disbar lawyer Renato Bondal for “gross immoral conduct” because he is allegedly a bigamist.
Bondal is one of the witnesses who appeared in the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee inquiry into alleged corruption during Vice President Jejomar Binay’s term as Makati mayor.
Bondal is also one of the two complainants in the plunder case filed in the Office of the Ombudsman against Makati Mayor Jejomar Erwin “Junjun” Binay Jr. and his father, the Vice President, in connection with the allegedly overpriced P2.3-billion Makati City Hall Building II.
In a complaint addressed to the Office of the Court Administrator and submitted on Aug. 11, a certain Eduardo Eridio, a resident of Barangay (village) Palanan, Makati, claimed that Bondal married Rutchie B. Barcelona on March 19, 1997, before Judge Felicidad Navarro-Quiambao of the Makati Metropolitan Trial Court Branch 65.
Malate church wedding
Eridio said Bondal contracted a second marriage on July 2, 2011, with Janice N. Ramos at Malate Church in Manila, with Fr. Daniel O’Malley as the officiating priest.
Sought for comment, Bondal laughed off the disbarment complaint, saying its filing was meant to harass him.
“I am shocked to learn from the members of the media that a disbarment case [has been filed] against me by someone who was not even related to my first wife. This disbarment case is part of the harassment against me. They cannot bring a good man down,” he told reporters in a phone interview.
Eridio said Bondal’s privilege to practice law should be withdrawn because “abandoning his first wife and children and taking a second wife 20 years younger than he clearly showed that he was leading a life not in accordance with the highest moral standards of the community.”
Eridio cited Section 27 Rule 138 of the Rules of Court that states: “A member of the bar may be removed or suspended from his office as attorney by the Supreme Court for any deceit, malpractice, or other gross misconduct in such office, grossly immoral conduct, or by reason of his conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude, or for any violation of the oath which he is required to take before the admission to practice, or for a willful disobedience of any lawful order of a superior court, or for corruptly or willfully appearing as an attorney for a party to a case without authority so to do.”
Bigamy
The complainant said Bondal also violated Article 349 of the Revised Penal Code, which imposed a penalty of “prision mayor” or imprisonment from six years to 12 years for bigamy.
Bigamy is committed when a person contracts a second or subsequent marriage before the former marriage was legally dissolved, or before the absent spouse was declared presumptively dead by means of a judgment rendered in proper proceedings.
Attached to his sworn complaint are copies of the certificates for both marriages, with Registry No. 97-1088 for the first marriage and Registry No. 2011-06804 for the second.
Also attached is a certification from the National Statistics Office signed by Lisa Grace Bersales, national statistician and civil registrar general, showing the two marriages registered in the database covering 1945-2014.
Bondal’s second name
Eridio said Bondal “tried to mislead the public by using a second name ‘Lou,’” as shown on the second marriage certificate, but in both records, his birthday, address and parents’ names were identical.
These documents, he said, proved that the grooms in the first and second marriages, Renato L. Bondal and Renato Lou L. Bondal, were the same man.
Quoting from jurisprudence, Eridio concluded, “As officers of the court, lawyers must not only in fact be of good moral character but must also be perceived to be of good moral character and must lead a life in accordance with the highest moral standards of the community.”
Divorced
Bondal, however, said he married his second wife, Ramos, after he and his first wife Barcelona, now a US citizen, filed for divorce.
The divorce was approved by the court in the United States, Bondal added.
Even before he married Ramos, Barcelona had remarried and bore three children with her new husband, Bondal said.
The lawyer added that he and Barcelona remained “good friends.”
He cited Article 26 of the Family Code: “Where a marriage between a Filipino citizen and a foreigner is validly celebrated and a divorce is thereafter validly obtained abroad by the alien spouse capacitating him or her to remarry, the Filipino spouse shall have capacity to remarry under Philippine law.”
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