Ex-mayor arraigned outdoors

This has got to be one for the books.

A former city mayor of Nueva Ecija was arraigned Monday on a multiple murder charge as he was lying in an ambulance parked on the Manila City Hall quadrangle.

Ex-Gapan City Mayor Ernesto Natividad entered a plea of not guilty in front of Judge Virgilio Alameda who stepped out of the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 10 just to preside over the proceedings which were held outdoors.

The former mayor has been diagnosed with diabetes and remains confined at Philippine General Hospital. His attending doctor had informed the court that Natividad would not be able to climb the stairs leading to the courthouse because of his condition.

The former mayor has been accused of ordering the killing of the two sons and three relatives of his political rival, Rodrigo “Boy” Pascual, in a cockpit in Gapan in 2006.

He was arrested in January at the Urology Center of the Philippines in Quezon City where he was undergoing dialysis.