A woman from Santa Rosa City in Laguna has uncovered a “premeditated try to rig the judgment with fraudulent intent” to dismiss court cases filed against Laguna 1st District Rep. Arlene Arcillas in relation to a missing P1.8-million fund for the Gender and Development (GAD) program of the city before the regional Commission on Human Rights office, court documents showed.
Complainant Antonia Vallejo of Brgy. Sinalhan, Santa Rosa City, in a three-page sworn affidavit, revealed the incident to her lawyer Mylen B. Gonzales, GAD practitioner.
Gonzales in turn notified CHR Chairperson Jose Luis Martin C. Gascon through a letter dated August 30, about an alleged “ready-made” resolution and “deplorable misdeeds” of two officers of CHR’s Region lV-A office in Kian Seng Building along A. Flores Street in San Pablo City, Laguna.
Vallejo claimed that on August 28, she called up CHR lV-A office to follow up about the clarificatory hearing sought by Arcillas’ lawyer, Atty. Leonardo Ragasa, Jr. in relation to the case on August 31 at 1:30 pm.
However, she was told by CHR staff on the other end of the phone line that the process would no longer be held because their office had already sent a resolution through mail based on the motion for reconsideration filed by Arcillas.
Vallejo then called her lawyer Gonzales, who in the affidavit was said to be confused with the supposed release of the CHR resolution because the clarificatory hearing set by Ragaza had not happened yet.
Also, “the 15 days given to us by the CHR to submit our response to the MR of the Congresswoman had not lapsed yet,” Gonzales added in Vallejo’s affidavit. The lawyer then asked the complainant to get an advance copy of the CHR resolution.
Vallejo called up the regional CHR office several times on August 29 and, since the phone line was busy, decided to personally travel to San Pablo City from Santa Rosa to get a copy of the resolution.
She received a copy of the resolution dated August 23 signed by Atty. Mila J. Punzalan, Attorney lV, Legal Division, CHR-lV-A and Atty. Rexford D, Guevarra, Officer-In-Charge, CHR-lV-A, which noted the Arcillas MR was granted — along with a declaration that the office’s previous resolution dated July 17 that Vallejo’s complaint was “partly meritorious” was now declared dismissed for lack of merit.
Vallejo was surprised by the “questionably super-fast and premature decision” of the regional CHR office to dismiss her complaint, then said in the affidavit that she received a call from Atty. Punzalan, who told her to disregard the copy of the resolution she received and also asked for her lawyer Gonzales’ number to discuss the issue. Punzalan did this thrice on that day, Vallejo said.
Punzalan called later in the day and told Vallejo there would be a clarificatory hearing on August 31 and instructed her to bring the resolution she received. This left Vallejo even more confused, she said in the affidavit, as she had the “ready-made” resolution apparently favoring Arcillas in hand.
With this discovery, Gonzales wrote to CHR Chairperson Jose Luis Martin C. Gascon on August 31, 2018 and brought up the incident. The lawyer also requested for the transfer of venue of the case to the CHR main office “to prevent similar incident and to let the course of justice fairly run though out the whole process to ferret out a judicious judgment on the case.”
Gascon, in a text message reply to Gonzales, said: “I will have our filed operations office inquire about this matter and ask our executive director to monitor it from the Central Office. I will send a copy of your email to our staff responsible for these matters.”