A recent judicial decision involving Valenzuela City mayor Rex Gatchalian and a factory fire in his city has raised questions about the nature and extent of the role of a local chief executive in the governance—more specifically, the maintenance of safety and order—in a province, city or municipality. The decision covered the loss of dozens of lives in a fire at a Valenzuela City factory that was found by a subsequent investigation to have been grossly deficient in worker-safety arrangements.
In the wake of the fire, Mayor Gatchalian was accused of gross negligence in having taken no steps to bring about factory-owner compliance with building safety standards. In his defense, Valenzuela City’s chief executive asserted that his office took no corrective action because the city council had not approved the necessary set of building safety regulations and there accordingly was nothing for his office to enforce. Mr. Gatchalian’s position was favorably considered and the mayor was exonerated from any culpability for the tragic deaths of dozens of factory workers.
If the law on criminal negligence is interpreted literally—literal interpretation of laws appears, after all, to be in vogue these days—exonerating the mayor was the proper judicial thing to do. But should it be interpreted literally, as in the administrative situation in Valenzuela City?
Consider the implications of the court ruling for the governance of a province, a city or a municipality. If the President of the Philippines is the parens patriae, maintaining a parental watch over all the citizens of this country, is not the mayor the parens civitatis, constantly looking after the welfare of all the citizens of his city or municipality? Just as the President of the Philippines cannot be interested in the welfare of only some Filipinos, so a city chief executive has to look after the welfare of all the inhabitants of the city. That includes its workers, whether working in factories or not.
Another implication of the court ruling exonerating Mayor Gatchalian from culpability is that a mayor’s accountability stops at the city council’s door and that a mayor’s administrative responsibility arises only when there is an ordinance for him to enforce. In other words, if the city council approves an ordinance on a particular matter, the mayor has an enforcement duty to perform, if the city council fails to legislate on a particular matter, the mayor does not have to do anything with regard thereto. This is absurd.
In this country’s system of government, the Executive Department is not called the primus among the three pares—the other pares being the legislature and the courts—for nothing. It is primarily the job of the Executive Department—represented in the Valenzuela City case by Mayor Gatchalian—not the city legislature, to ascertain the problems of the city and its residents and craft appropriate legislation for the legislature’s consideration and approval. The legislature should not be expected to take the lead in finding out what problems and ailments beset the province or city or municipality; its principal job is to examine proposals for legislation and either approve or disapprove them.
The problem arises when—as in the Valenzuela City case—the city or municipal legislature neglects to enact an ordinance laying down regulations intended to ensure the safety and protect the health of factory workers. What happens in such a situation? Does the chief executive of the city or municipality, who should be knowledgeable about the state of the area’s factories, do nothing, in the belief that he is not required to enforce ordinances that do not exist? Or should he try to correct a bad worker-safety environment by ordering the crafting of an appropriate ordinance, which the city or municipal government can then enforce? With such an ordinance in place, there can be no repetition of the exculpation of Mayor Gatchalian from responsibility for the numerous deaths resulting from his city’s recent factory fire.
Mayor Gatchalian should not have been exonerated by the court. He should have been held partly culpable for the deaths resulting from the factory fire in his city. He was well aware that Valenzuela City is full of factories large and small and he should not have known that there was no factory-safety ordinance in place. He should not be allowed to get away with saying that where there is no ordinance, there is no corresponding responsibility on the part of the mayor.
The decision to exonerate Mayor Gatchalian was a mistake. The mistake should be corrected. If not corrected, it will send out a bad message, viz., that local chief executives need not take actions.
A key player in any effort to reverse the Gatchalian exoneration should be DILG (Department of the Interior and Local Government), the local governments and BFP (Bureau of Fire Protection). Because of its impact on the insurance industry, Insurance and Surety Association of the Philippines ought to be a co-appellant.
E-mail: rudyromero777@yahoo.com
