MANILA, Philippines — The widow of Vice Mayor Alexander Lubigan of Trece Martires, Cavite has insisted on the filing of murder charges against Mayor Melandres de Sagun.
In her reply-affidavit submitted at the continuation of the preliminary investigation hearing yesterday on the complaints filed against De Sagun before the Department of Justice (DOJ), Gemma Lubigan reiterated that the mayor along with Councilor Lawrence Arca of Maragondon, a certain Rhonel Bersamina, Luis Abad Jr. and Fletchetro Paiton, the alleged gunman, were behind the killing of her husband.
Lubigan asked the DOJ panel chaired by Senior Deputy State Prosecutor Rassendell Rex Gingoyon to file charges against the suspects.
“The respondents’ counter-affidavits do not deserve even a scant consideration... for bearing nothing more but self-serving claims, bare denials and outrageous lies,” Lubigan said in her 13-page pleading.
She said De Sagun and his co-accused failed to disprove allegations that they perpetrated the ambush that killed her husband and his driver Romulo Guillemer. The vice mayor’s bodyguard, Romeo Edrinal, survived the attack.
On De Sagun’s claim that that the killing of the vice mayor could be a case of parricide, Lubigan said “the insinuation that I was responsible for my husband’s death is laughable at best.”
De Sagun had earlier sought the dismissal of the charges filed against him for lack of merit.
Lubigan is running for mayor in next year’s elections. She will be pitted against De Sagun’s father, a former mayor.