THE decision of Dagupan City Vice Mayor Bryan Kua and Councilors Michael Fernandez, Dennis Canto, Jeslito Seen, Marcelino Fernandez and Joshua Bugayong to file criminal cases against their colleagues in the majority bloc albeit long overdue, is a good precedent.

Dagupeños actually wondered why the councilors in the minority allowed Councilors Redford Erfe-Mejia, Alfie Fernandez, Celia Lim, Librada Reyna-Macalanda, Alvin Coquia, Irene Lim-Acosta and Marilou Fernandez to get away with their crafted self-serving Internal Rules and Regulations when there were glaring anomalous provisions. One anomaly was the designation of only the minority leader as member in committees, with no voting rights.  Then the SK president was not named chairman of the committee on youth and sports when the Local Government Code mandated it.

The minority bloc could have also cited the 7 councilors in an administrative case before the Ombudsman early on for blocking the passage of the 2023 Annual Budget submitted by the City Mayor. There was already a judicial precedence in the case of the annual budget of the Quezon province some years back. The Ombudsman promptly suspended all the members of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan for at least six months for failing to act and pass the annual budget. Sadly, the minority bloc just went along with the whims and caprices of the seven councilors believing that matters could not possibly get any worse.

In fact, Mayor Belen Fernandez herself, through the city legal officer, could have filed the administrative cases vs. the seven councilors for refusing to approve the P1.3 billion 2023 annual budget and instead passed its own version that was subsequently deemed “inoperative in its entirety” by the Department of Budget and Management. Still the Fernandez administration simply demurred after publicly threatening to do so and merely chose to operate in the city with a reenacted budget of 2022.

Throughout the first year of the seven councilors, they thought nothing of the series of deprivations that residents were made to suffer by holding the passage of the annual budget as hostage to their demand that they be paid P100,000 monthly initially under the cover of designating “job order employees” at P10,000 each.

They have to be stopped and only the filing of administrative cases before the Ombudsman, initially, will stop them from continuously doing their worst. And criminal cases must be filed to make them accountable for their unrestrained use of defamatory language to discredit the system and anyone who stands up to their arrogance.

So, let the axe fall where it may now that the cases are filed, finally. And more should be filed.

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