PASS prexy unfazed by mayor’s threat
ALAMINOS City —“I am ready to face Mayor Braganza’s libel case.”
This was the terse reply of Ruben Morante, president of the Pangasinan Accountancy and Science School (PASS) College to the threat of City Mayor Hernani Braganza to file a libel suit against him.
But he warned the city mayor “to put up the good substances why I should face a case of libel in court. I hope you will find enough evidence to file a libel case against me,” Morante added.
He said the mayor sidestepped the real issue, which was the illegal operation of the Pangasinan State University Alaminos Campus, when he refused to respond directly to questions posed during an earlier edition of Meet the Press forum.
Morante also belied Braganza’s claim that he tried to extort money from the PSU. He said he offered a consortium arrangement with the PSU as endorsed by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to legitimize the Alamnos campus operation. He said the offer was made without any insinuation of extortion.
“I was advised by CHED, knowing that I could help. My only intention is to help the poor students of Alaminos,” he pointed out.
Morante then challenged Braganza to be transparent about the city government’s agreement with the PSU.
“If we see that he is really not hiding anything to the public and there is nothing wrong in the bilateral agreement that they signed, then we would stop bothering him for this issue,” he said.
He dared Braganza: to dissolve the contract between Alaminos and PSU… withdraw the city’s 30 percent share of profit of the school” to settle the issue once and for all.
Morante said he had no plans of filing his own libel case against Braganza when the latter called him “greedy” and “extortionist.” “Hindi po kami ang nagsimula nito. Ikaw ang nagsimula, ikaw rin ang tumapos.” (PIA-Pangasinan)
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