House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez INQUIRER PHOTO / NINO JESUS ORBETA
A bill filed by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez III that wants to do away with the “unnecessary” preventive suspension of officials facing graft charges is inching its way to approval after it passed second reading at the House of Representatives.
House Bill No. 6590 seeks to amend Republic Act No. 3019, the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, “by providing an exception to the imposition of preventive suspension against public officers.”
Alvarez, the principal author of the bill, said in the statement “the exception shall be applicable to public officers who are no longer connected with the office wherein the offense charged was committed.”
Alvarez claimed that officials were placed on preventive suspension when they were being investigated to stop them from influencing witnesses or tampering with records.
Threat removed
“The change in circumstances of the public officer effectively removes this threat, making the provision in line with the spirit and intent of the law,” said Alvarez, the principal author of the bill.
Alvarez filed the bill in September last year, shortly after Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte Jr. and Pangasinan Rep. Amado Espino Jr. were both suspended by the Sandiganbayan.
The two representatives are undergoing separate trials for graft charges filed against them when they were local provincial officials.
Villafuerte’s case stemmed from an allegedly anomalous procurement of P20 million worth of petroleum products for the Camarines Sur provincial government when he was its governor in 2010.
Espino was suspended for a graft charge for allegedly allowing firms to operate illegal black sand mining in the province when he was Pangasinan governor in 2011.