Nuñez: DILG bungled service of orders

By LITO RULONA
Correspondent

FORMER vice mayor Caesar Ian Acenas’s lawyer in the failed 2015 attempt to boot Mayor Oscar Moreno out of city hall yesterday accused officials of the interior department here of taking part in what she called a stage-managed bungling of the service of five dismissal and disqualification orders against the local chief executive on Monday afternoon.

“It’s all drama,” said Janeth Nuñez, the lawyer and wife of the man who filed a string of graft complaints against Moreno before the Office of the Ombudsman.

Her husband Antonio Jr. accused Moreno and former members of the capitol’s bids and awards committee of graft in connection with the lease of heavy equipment without a public bidding when the mayor was governor of Misamis Oriental.

Nuñez served as a legal counsel to ex-vice mayor Acenas in his failed attempt at taking control of city hall in late 2015. The power-grab attempt resulted in a standoff at city hall that ended with the appellate court’s issuance of a temporary restraining and status quo ante order in favor of Moreno.

She said the Department of Interior and Local Government here did not properly serve the dismissal-disqualification orders.

On Monday afternoon, the DILG regional office delivered the dismissal and disqualification orders to the Office of the City Secretary and the office of Vice Mayor Raineir Joaquin Uy who was out of town and on official business.

“The DILG has committed a blatant mistake,” Nuñez told local radio. “Dili ka pwede mag-serve og dismissal [order] sa bisan kinsa lamang. Dapat ang imong tagaan should be ang tawo nga ma-dismiss from service or any person that is considered a respondent.”

She said the service of the ombudsman’s orders were “very questionable,” and DILG regional director Arnel Agape and members of his group can be held liable.

“We are surprised [with] the act of DILG which is, dili nila first time nga mag-serve og susamang dismissal order… Serving the dismissal order before the city council is very questionable.”

She said the DILG regional office did not learn its lesson, citing the case of Acenas, her other client, who took his oath as mayor after the DILG served another dismissal and disqualification order against Moreno in 2015. She said the DILG had merely posted the dismissal order at the legislative building.

That, she said, allowed Moreno to question the legality of the service.

“Unya karon didto na gyud sa City Council Secretary Arturo de San Miguel,” she said.

Nuñez said she suspected that the “drama” was a result of political maneuverings aimed at bungling the service of the dismissal-disqualification orders.

She said she suspected that the way the ombudsman’s orders were served was deliberate and that DILG officials “pre-empted… prepared or planned” it that way.

Nuñez said the DILG officials here were “probably pressured” only to serve the orders for compliance purposes because there was a directive from their superiors at the Department’s central office.

“I do not think that it was an honest mistake. Any person can evaluate the situation. Ngil-ad kaayo ang gibuhat sa DILG nag-circus sila nga ilang gipagawas to save face. They had been bungling the service of the dismissal [orders],” she said.