|
THE Supreme Court (SC) upheld the independence of the Office of the
Ombudsman after it junked the petition for mandamus of the lawyer of
Commission on Elections (Comelec) Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano,
as to the plea to force the Ombudsman to suspend the local officials
of Cagayan de Oro City.
In a four-page resolution of the
SC en banc, the Court dismissed the petition of Atty. Eddie
Tamondong who prayed to the High Court to order Ombudsman Maria
Merceditas Navarro-Gutierrez to make a ruling for the preventive
suspension of then-Mayor Vicente Emano of Cagayan de Oro City and
the local officials of the province.
The said ruling, under the court
of Chief Justice Reynato Puno, is a reversal of the former SC ruling
in the Mega-Pacific case, during the tenure of then Chief Justice
Artemio Panganiban, which compelled the Ombudsman to rule on the
criminal and administrative charges against the Comelec Commissioners
headed by Chairman Benjamin Abalos.
In the present case, Tamondong
filed criminal and administrative charges against Emano and the
other local officials of Cagayan de Oro on October 22, 2003. As the
case remained unresolved at the Office of the Ombudsman, Tamonding
decided to elevate the case to the SC to compel the latter to
resolve the issue.
However, the SC opined that it
couldn’t intrude into the powers of the Ombudsman for it sees
“no grave abuse of discretion” in the performance of its duties,
noting that petitioner failed to show the same to manifest
injustice” in the Ombudsman’s handling of his case.
The 15-man tribunal said that
while it is clear under Section 16, Article III of the 1987
Constitution that a party has the right to ask for the speedy
resolution of a case, the volume of the cases that reaches the
office must be taken into consideration.
In addition, the SC said that
Tamondong failed to exhaust all remedies for the resolution of the
case before the Ombudsman before taking the matter to the High Court. .
--Jomar Canlas
|
