CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—Tensions continued at City Hall as the opposition Padayon Party refused to recognize a temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by the Court of Apeals in favor of embattled Mayor Oscar Moreno.
Councilor Ramon Tabor said the order was moot and academic as the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) had already installed Vice Mayor Ian Acenas as acting mayor as early as Thursday.
The CA came out with the ruling on Friday, a few days after Moreno, a reelectionist, sought to stop his dismissal, which the Ombudsman had ordered on Nov. 5 for grave misconduct when he entered into a tax deal with Ajinomoto Philippines without prior authorization from the city council.
Tabor said the TRO was not an order for status quo ante and was meant only to stop the enforcement of the dismissal order. But he said the DILG’s swearing in of Acenas was enough proof the order had been implemented.
Moreno filed the petition last week but failed to get a relief after three magistrates of the Cagayan de Oro-based CA inhibited themselves from hearing the case.
He said he would not vacate his office but added that his motive was to “avert any damage to the city that their premature and fundamentally baseless assumption might cause.”
Worried on successors
The mayor said he was worried that if he and his staff leave his office at the Executive Building, these “successors” might “just greedily squander the close to P2 billion that are in our banks.” He was referring to the city’s unallocated funds, which was the result of the city council’s act to slash hefty amounts from his 2014 budget proposal.
Acenas and Councilor Candy Darimbang were sworn in as mayor and vice mayor, on Thursday night after the DILG served the dismissal order.
Moreno has called on the Ombudsman to act on his motion for reconsideration, noting that under its own rules, the Ombudsman should act on motions of this kind within three days. “I hope that the Ombudsman will correct the injustice that their decision has caused,” he said.