MANILA – A Mindanao governor has been suspended by the office of the Ombudsman for six months without pay for allegedly pocketing part of the calamity assistance fund equivalent to $60,000, which was granted to his province in 2008.
Orlando Casimiro, the acting Ombudsman, said he ordered the suspension of Governor Jesus Sacdalan of North Cotabato province in Mindanao for grave misconduct and dishonesty arising from his alleged misuse of the calamity fund.
Records at the Ombudsman showed that the case against Sacdalan arose from a complaint filed by Milagros Casis, the former district engineer of North Cotabato.
Casis alleged that Sacdalan pocketed about $30,000 from the calamity fund which represented the excess payment for fuel allocated for several road projects in the province but which was never used and instead converted into cash.
According to Casis, Sacdalan ordered her in March 2008 to prepare programmes of work and dictated the amounts to be released for fuel. But she added she objected because the amounts were much more than the allotment needed to to finish the projects.
Due to her objections, Casis said Sacdalan ordered her transfer to another office and named a replacement who was made to account for the expenses based on the figures allegedly dictated by the governor.
Casis said her allegations were supported by the testimony of two former members of the internal revenue audit team assigned to Sacdalan’s office. The two said the amount of fuel reportedly used for the road projects, totalling more than 200,000 liters would have overflowed the storage tanks of the two gasoline stations where the fuel was purchased.
But more than that, the two witnesses said the fuel purchased would have flooded the capital city of Kidapawan and the town of Midsayap where the two gasoline stations are located.
Also buttressing her claim, Casis said, was a “barangay” (village) chairman in the town of President Roxas, who disputed claims that his village used about $4,000 worth of fuel when the actual work by a fleet of heavy equipment for the road project took only five days.
But Sacdalan told an interview in a local radio station that the case against him was “politically motivated” and hatched allegedly by his rivals in order to pin him down.
However, the governor refused to identify his political opponents. On November 16, he announced he was running for reelection as governor as the official candidate of the ruling Lakas-Kampi Christian Muslim Democrats.
Although he was not named, North Cotabato Governor Emmanuel Pinol, a former journalist and boxing commentator, dismissed as “whimsical” Sacdalan’s insinuations that he was behind the complaint filed against the governor.
Pinol pointed out it was unfair for Sacdalan to insinuate that he instigated the filing of the complaint against the governor before the office of the Ombudsman.
The two were strong political allies when Pinol served as North Cotabato governor from 2001 to 2007 with Sacdalan as his vice governor.
In the 2007 elections, Pinol said he agreed to switch positions with him serving as the running mate of Sacdalan.
However, their political relations started to turn sour in 2008 due to “irreconcilable differences” which sources blamed on the refusal of Sacdalan to again step down and give way and enable Pinol to regain the gubernatorial post in the May 2010 elections.
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