By URIEL C. QUILINGUING
Contributing Editor
BAHAY Bakasyonan sa Camiguin (BBC) on Monday filed a motion for reconsideration on the lifting of a writ of injunction a regional court issued seven months ago, following a restraining order on a closure order from the Mambajao town government.
Lawyer Homer Mabale, in a news conference here Wednesday, said his client Ma. Suzette Chan Good is seeking court relief after the municipal police, claiming to have a court order, padlocked the beach resort in Barangay Balbagon in Mambajao this Jan. 20.
Mabale alleged that the May 19, 2019 closure order was issued arbitrarily; that it was issued with grave abuse of discretion, and it was done in bad faith.
“They (police) padlocked the entrance gate without prior notice while we have (resort) guests, resort workers and myself inside,” BBC co-owner Good told reporters.
Good said former Mambajao mayor and now Gov. Jurdin Jesus Romualdo ordered the resort’s closure during the election period in May last year reportedly because BBC reportedly violated Mambajao’s revised ecological waste ordinance.
But Mabale, in a nine-page “very urgent motion for reconsideration” to the RTC 10th Judicial Region Branch 28 based in Camiguin, argued that Municipal Ordinance 2013-04-A only provides a fine of P2,500 to violators, without a penal provision on the closure of establishments.
He said the Environmental Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the region, inspected BBC’s premises later and cleared it Nov. 7 last year.
Because of these, the petitioner said, the closure order could be seen as a form of harassment given that she supported her cousin Carlo Chan Borromeo’s campaign for the mayoral post. Carlo was an independent candidate for Mambajao mayor against Mayor Yñigo Jesus Romualdo, son of the governor.
She said that before the lifting of the writ of injunction, while BBC was still doing business, the municipal treasurer refused to accept payment for the renewal of the establishment’s business permit.
Since BBC’s gate was padlocked, the establishment has cancelled all bookings and no longer accepts new ones.
“For now, we don’t know when we can operate again but we paid all our 70 resort workers [and] they may eventually become jobless,” said the BBC co-owner, a Camiguignon who came back to the island 10 years ago after working abroad.
