Official in trouble for repeating flag ceremony

ILOILO CITY, Iloilo, Philippines — An official of a government-run sanitarium has found herself in a legal bind for ordering a repeat of a flag ceremony, claiming it was held too early and that she didn’t want to be marked absent.

Dr. Gemma Suelo, chief of the medical professional staff of Western Visayas Sanitarium (WVS) in Santa Barbara town, Iloilo province, is now charged in court for alleged violation of a law on respect and reverence to the national flag.

She posted a P6,000 bail last week after Judge Rodolfo Convocar of the 13th Municipal Circuit Trial Court (MCTC) issued a warrant for her arrest for alleged violation of Republic Act (RA) No. 8491 or the Flag and Heraldic Code of the Philippines.

The warrant was issued on Oct. 2, almost a year after the Iloilo Provincial Prosecutor’s Office released a three-page resolution dated Oct. 31, 2019, which indicted Suelo for violation of Section 22 of RA 8491.

Flag event behavior

The provision prescribes that the lowering of the Philippine flag should be done “solemnly and slowly so that the flag shall be down the mast at the sound of the last note of the anthem.”

It also mandates that “those in the assembly shall observe the same deportment or shall observe the same behavior as for the flag-raising ceremony.”

A complaint filed on behalf of WVS by Conrado Soronongon Jr., officer-in-charge of hospital operations and patient support service, said Suelo ordered a repeat of the sanitarium’s flag-lowering ceremony on Oct. 7, 2016, even after the flag was already lowered and folded.

Flag retreat in the government-run facility is held every Friday in accordance with Civil Service Commission Memorandum Circular No. 19 series of 2012, which also enjoined all public servants to attend the flag raising ceremony every Monday.

Soronongon said he sued Suelo because he found the repetition of the flag retreat ceremony an “abuse of authority, demeaning and an irreverence to the national flag.”

‘Way too early’

But Suelo denied violating any law. In her counteraffidavit, she said she ordered a repeat of the flag retreat ceremony because it was held way too early and so that she and other sanitarium personnel who had arrived minutes before or at 5 p.m., the prescribed time, would not be marked absent in the event.

The resolution issued by Assisting Provincial Prosecutor June Ann Bernal said the repetition of the ceremony “ran contrary to the observance of the ceremony in an honored or esteemed manner.”

It said Suelo, who was the sanitarium’s officer-in-charge then, should have instead questioned the holding of the flag-lowering ceremony before 5 p.m.

Lawyer Honorato Sayno Jr., legal counsel of Suelo, said his client had already filed a petition for review in the Regional State Prosecutor, seeking a reversal of the resolution of the Iloilo Provincial Prosecutor’s Office for “errors of law and of facts.”

Sayno stressed that the alleged offense did not fall under RA 8491.

He said a motion to defer proceedings in the MCTC had also been filed, citing the pending petition for review.