'Bataan's Garcia no longer has authority'

Bataan Gov. Enrique “Tet” Garcia Jr. no longer has authority to hold office at the provincial capitol even as he still refuses to step down and comply with his six-month suspension order over plunder and other graft charges he is facing for the illegal sale and auction of a private property in 2005, the Office of the Ombudsman said yesterday.

The anti-graft office said Garcia is considered suspended and should not be recognized by authorities as Bataan governor for the meantime despite his refusal to receive the suspension order served by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).

Overall Deputy Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro, who ordered Garcia’s preventive suspension two weeks ago, said he has received a report from DILG Assistant Secretary for Legal and Administrative Affairs Emeterio Moreno Jr. which stated that the suspension order is “considered received and served.”

“If a judgment or decision is not delivered to a party for reason attributable to him, service is deemed completed and the judgment or decision will be considered validly served as long as it can be shown that the attempt to deliver it to him would be valid were it not for his or his counsel’s refusal to receive it,” Moreno’s letter dated Nov.12 stated, quoting a Supreme Court ruling.

Moreno told the Ombudsman that insofar as the DILG is concerned, the suspension order dated Oct. 28 “had already been satisfactorily served.”

The suspension order was served even as Garcia had a pending petition for a temporary restraining order with the Court of Appeals.

Garcia said he has asked the appellate court to swiftly act on his petition against the suspension order “to end the volatile situation” in the province that has caused “unnecessary delays” in the delivery of public services.

But Moreno said they are no longer recognizing Garcia as governor, as Vice Gov. Serafin Roman and first provincial board member Efren Pascual have already taken their oaths as acting governor and vice governor, respectively.

Moreno submitted to the Ombudsman an affidavit of service by lawyer Ofelio Tactac Jr., Region 3 officer of the DILG, which stated that he was prevented from entering the Bataan provincial capitol to serve the suspension order as some 2,000 supporters of Garcia barricaded the compound.

Meanwhile, Casimiro denied allegations that the suspension order against Garcia was part of an alleged political vendetta of Ombudsman Ma. Merceditas Gutierrez after her brother lost in last year’s mayoral race in Samal, Bataan.

“Ombudsman Gutierrez had inhibited even at the onset of our investigation on this case. So she really had no hand in the issuance of the preventive suspension order against Gov. Garcia,” he said.

Garcia was preventively suspended along with three other local officials, namely provincial legal officer Aurelio Angeles Jr., provincial treasurer Emerlinda Talento, and Balanga City administrator Rodolfo de Mesa.

Their suspension stemmed from a complaint filed by former employees of the defunct Sunrise Paper Products Industries Inc., which used to operate a paper mill in Barangay Doña, Orani, Bataan.

The former Sunrise employees filed the complaint after Branch 3 of the Bataan Regional Trial Court declared invalid and illegal the warrant of levy issued by the Bataan provincial government on Jan. 2, 2003 and the notice of sale on Aug. 29, 2003 for the machinery and equipment of Sunrise, which were the same assets purchased by one Victor Gawtee.

The court also declared falsified and invalid the transfer certificates of titles of two Sunrise lots in favor of the provincial government. – With Raffy Viray