Taguig Mayor Lani Cayetano faces raps for locking session hall

For padlocking the session hall, Taguig Mayor Maria Laarni “Lani” Cayetano faces violation of the Revised Penal Code before the Sandiganbayan for preventing members of the Sangguniang Panlungsod to hold regular sessions.

In its information against Cayetano, Ombudsman prosecutors accused Lani Cayetano and Executive Assistant/Taguig city administrator Jose Luis Montales of conspiring with one another to prevent by force or fraud the city council meeting when Cayetano ordered to close the session hall of the Sangguniang Panlungsod without proper notice or reason on Aug. 2010.

Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales earlier indicted the wife of Senator Alan Peter Cayetano for violation of Article 143 of the Revised Penal Code (RPC).
Senator Cayetano is seeking the vice presidency seat in 2016.

Article 143 of the RPC penalizes persons who, by force or fraud, prevent or tend to prevent the meetings of local legislative bodies.

The case stemmed from the eviction of the Sangguniang Members and their transfer to a small room in the city auditorium in 2010.

The Ombudsman said the city council held its proceedings on the staircase of the city hall and in various venues inside and outside the city hall for the next 14 sessions.

The council said the padlocking of the session hall was an act of hostility, premeditated and executed with undue haste, without prior consultation and prior notice.

Morales also junked Cayetano’s explanation that the move was part of the city’s re-engineering and re-organizational plan.

The Ombudsman said there was neither a plan nor a semblance of a project study that would make necessary the immediate change in the layout of the city hall offices.

The Ombudsman’s resolution also said that “the documentary evidence, as well as respondents’ own admissions, belied their claim that any ‘re-organizational or re-engineering plan’ with respect to city hall offices actually existed.”

The Ombudsman also said Cayetano failed to comply with Section 45(b), Article I, Chapter III of the Local Government Code which requires that the power bestowed upon the local chief executive to assign and allocate office spaces must be exercised for the purpose of promoting efficient and economical governance, for “the exercise of any power, whether express or implied, must be rational. The exercise necessarily precludes any arbitrariness or abuse.”

The padlocking incident stemmed from a political rivalry between Cayetano and Taguig Vice Mayor George Elias, who cried political harrassment when the mayor prevented them from holding sessions.

Elias is an ally of the Tiñga political clan, under which former Supreme Court Associate Justice Dante Tiñga lost to Cayetano in the May 2010 elections.

The council was then forced to work in the upper deck of the auditorium where the ballot boxes and other election paraphernalia used in the 2010 elections were stored. These were the subject of an election protest against Cayetano.

Cayetano has maintained that the closure of the session hall was for the reorganization of the city hall offices.