I’m not hiding from SC – Negros mayor

PULUPANDAN, Negros Occidental – Agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) have failed twice in their efforts to locate this town’s mayor and serve him a Supreme Court order to turn over the custody of his three-year-old son to fitness expert Marie Roxanne “Plinky” Recto.

Eight NBI agents, led by the agency’s Bacolod officer-in-charge, Mamerto Cortez, and a local police escort went to the ancestral home of Mayor Magdaleno Peña in Barangay Ubay but found it locked.

They were only allowed entry after Peña called up the caretaker, Dolly Iraga. But neither Peña nor his son was there.

Talking to reporters on Iraga’s mobile phone, Peña said he was not in hiding and that he was on vacation with his son.

“They can search the nation because I am not there,” he said, reacting to Cortez’s statement that a nationwide manhunt would be launched against him.

“I am out of the country,” he said. He would not reveal his location but jokingly said he was in the south of France with his son.

“I am not hiding from the Supreme Court. I will go there myself,” he said.

The municipal administrator has issued a certification that Peña has been on official leave since November.

Iraga claimed that the three-year-old boy left ahead of his father and both have not returned since.

Peña’s ancestral home is also devoid of any Christmas decoration, as the mayor had no intention to spend the holidays there.

The Supreme Court’s Third Division granted Recto custody of her son with Peña in partial execution of the decisions of the Court of Appeals on Sept. 15, 2006 and Jan. 24, 2007 pending a final resolution on the case.

In granting Recto’s motion for execution pending appeal, the high court noted that the boy is below seven years old and is an illegitimate child.

Under Article 176 of the Family Code, illegitimate children shall be under the sole parental custody of their mother, the tribunal said.

“She has the right to keep him in her company. She cannot be deprived of that right, and she may not even renounce or transfer it, except in cases authorized by the law,” the tribunal said.

“Only the most compelling of reasons such as the mother’s unfitness to exercise sole parental authority shall justify her deprivation of parental authority and the award of custody to someone else,” it added.