Mayor Pamintuan is Angeles City’s Garin

Being in power too long apparently makes a local government official a bully who will stop at nothing just to get his way.

Earlier this month, Rep. Oscar Garin Jr. of Iloilo and his father, Mayor Oscar Garin Sr. of Guimbal town, also in Iloilo, beat up a helpless policeman, PO3 Federico Macaya Jr., at the local police station and in the presence of other cops. Father and son also berated the cop and reminded him of their power and influence. Their bodyguards were there to underscore that reminder.

The Garin incident reminds many about Angeles City Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan who, like the Garin bullies, has been in power for too long.

Back in 2008, Dr. Josefino Villaroman obtained his permanent appointment as Angeles City veterinarian. For the next six years, he dutifully attended to his duties.

In 2014, Mayor Pamintuan reassigned Villaroman to his office as mayor, but without specifying what work Villaroman was expected to do. Thus, Pamintuan effectively prevented the city’s veterinarian from performing his veterinary work for the city.

Seeing his reassignment as a constructive dismissal, which is illegal under the law, Villaroman refused to report for work in the mayor’s office. Although he requested Pamintuan to reinstate him to his original post as city veterinarian, Pamintuan refused.

In January 2015, Villaroman filed a case against Pamintuan in the Office of the Ombudsman, then headed by Conchita Carpio-Morales, a known minion of then President Benigno Aquino III. Unfortunately for Villaroman, Morales slept on the case for the next three years, until she left office last year.

Later in May 2016, Pamintuan dropped Villaroman from the roster of city employees allegedly because of the latter’s refusal to report for work at the mayor’s office.

Villaroman’s removal compelled him to complain to the Civil Service Commission (CSC), which eventually ruled that his reassignment was void for being in violation of civil service rules. The CSC, however, upheld Villaroman’s dismissal purportedly because the veterinarian refused to report for work at Pamintuan’s office.

Eventually, the case reached the Court of Appeals (CA), which ruled in favor of Villaroman.

The CA affirmed the finding of the CSC that Villaroman’s reassignment is void and held that Villaroman cannot be dismissed for his refusal to comply with a void reassignment.

After Pamintuan failed to persuade the CA to reconsider its ruling, he brought the case to the Supreme Court (SC), where it remains pending to this day. Villaroman said that his case has been recently reassigned to Justice Estela Perlas-Bernabe, whom he hopes will attend to his case with dispatch.

Right now, Villaroman has had no income for the past four years. The veterinarian from the University of the Philippines is now heavily indebted and his daughter’s schooling has been prejudiced. As a 61-year old head of the family, Villaroman badly needs to get his job back.

In contrast, Pamintuan remains in power and has none of the serious financial problems crippling Villaroman. Pamintuan is confident that even if he loses in the SC, he can still delay the case by filing a motion for reconsideration.

From all indications, Pamintuan feels certain that it will be the city government – and not him – that will be required to pay whatever backwages Villaroman is entitled to.

Indeed, Pamintuan is a bully, no different from the Garins of Iloilo and that disagreeable Ateneo high school student who recently beat up his classmate to show off his skill in martial arts.

Adding to Villaroman’s problem is the failure of the Office of the Ombudsman to resolve the case he filed against Pamintuan in January 2015. That case is now four years old and the Ombudsman has not acted on it. Villaroman is beginning to suspect that there may be truth in the public statement a former graft prosecutor once made – that one can pay a “parking fee” in the office of the Ombudsman for the purpose of getting the government investigators to sleep on a case for an indefinite number of years.

Villaroman’s only hope is that the new Ombudsman, Samuel Martires, will attend to the many sleeping cases in his new government post, including Villaroman’s case against the Pamintuan bully.