Suspensionof Carandang invalid – lawmaker

MANILA, Philippines — The 90-day suspension imposed by President Duterte on Overall Deputy Ombudsman Melchor Carandang does not have any presumption of regularity and is deemed invalid, an opposition lawmaker said yesterday.

Rep. Edcel Lagman said that unless the ruling in the case of former deputy ombudsman Emilio Gonzalez III in 2014 is reversed by the Supreme Court, the President has no authority to remove, suspend or discipline the deputies of the ombudsman.

“Without the said decision being first overturned, President Duterte is obliged to enforce and uphold its validity and efficacy, not to subvert it by suspending ODO Carandang,” Lagman explained.

The lawmaker issued the statement following pronouncements by Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo that the President’s sanction enjoys presumption of regularity and that it was up to Carandang to seek a remedy by questioning it before the SC.

“The President’s apologists, like adviser Panelo, are grossly mistaken when they assert that the suspension of Carandang enjoys the presumption of regularity,” Lagman said in a press statement.

He said that since the subject suspension defies the final decision of the SC in the Gonzalez case, the suspension of Carandang by the Office of the President is void ab initio or invalid from the start, and is devoid of any shade of regularity. 

A source from the Office of the Ombudsman, however, pointed out Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales’ obvious bias in favor of her political benefactor, former president Benigno Aquino III, who did the same thing twice during his six-year term. 

The source recalled that Morales — an Aquino appointee who took over when her predecessor Merceditas Gutierrez was forced to resign – “refused to honor” the SC decision reinstating Gonzalez, which also declared as unconstitutional his dismissal.

“Now that it is convenient for her to invoke the ruling, all of a sudden she says that she will not implement the suspension order of the Office of the President?” he said, noting that Morales likewise “never raised a howl” when Aquino dismissed another Ombudsman official.

Aquino fired former special prosecutor Wendell Barreras-Sulit in mid-2013, but Morales complied with the dismissal order. Not an impeachable official, Sulit enjoys a fixed seven-year term as head of the prosecuting arm of the ombudsman. 

In both cases, Aquino lost in the Court of Appeals and the SC, where both Gonzalez and Sulit were ordered reinstated.

In separate rulings, the SC said that Aquino’s dismissal of Gonzalez was invalid while that of Sulit was “queerly constitutional.”