Mayor Cayetano asks court to withhold arrest over padlock raps

Taguig City Mayor Lani Cayetano says the charges against her are the handiwork of her political opponents. INQUIRER PHOTO

Taguig City Mayor Laarni Cayetano has asked the Sandiganbayan to withhold the impending arrest warrant against her over charges of padlocking the city council session hall and evicting her political rivals years ago.

In a motion filed before the antigraft court first division, Cayetano said the charges against her for violating the Revised Penal Code were the handiwork of her political opponents in the city government.

READ: Taguig Mayor Lani Cayetano faces raps for locking session hall

Cayetano urged the court to withhold the arrest warrant and remand the case to the Ombudsman for a reinvestigation.

The wife of Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano said the complaint against her was filed by Vice Mayor George Elias and 16 councilors from the Sangguniang Panglungsod for locking the session hall on August 2010 and preventing them from holding their regular session.

Senator Cayetano is seeking the vice presidency in 2016.

Mayor Cayetano was indicted by the Ombudsman for violation of Article 143 of the Revised Penal Code, which penalized persons who, by force or fraud, prevented or tended to prevent the meetings of local legislative bodies.

Mayor Cayetano said the complainants were from the “Kilusang Diwa ng Taguig” of former Mayor Sigfrido Tinga and his father former Supreme Court Justice Dante Tinga. The Cayetanos and Tinga are long-time political rivals in Taguig.

Cayetano beat former Justice Tinga in the 2010 elections. She again beat Tinga’s daughter Rica for mayor in the 2013 elections.

Cayetano maintained that the closure of the session hall was for the reorganization and reengineering of the city hall offices, which was part of her powers as mayor.

She said the session hall was relocated to the old courtroom, which was refurbished with the same facilities. The councilors and vice mayor were also notified beforehand of the relocation.

She added that there was enough signage that showed where the session hall was relocated.

“Obviously, there is a whale of difference between transferring the Sangguniang Panlungsod to a new session hall and preventing them from conducting their session,” the motion said.

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

READ: Ombudsman indicts Mayor Lani Cayetano for locking session hall

Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales said because Cayetano padlocked the session hall, 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 and without prior consultation and notice.

Morales also junked Cayetano’s explanation that the move was part of the city’s reengineering and reorganizational 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 ‘reorganizational or reengineering 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 required 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 council was forced to work in the upper deck of the auditorium where the ballot boxes and other election paraphernalia used in the 2010 elections were kept. These were the subject of an election protest against Cayetano. Marc Jayson Cayabyab/RC

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