THE family of the late vice governor Gregorio Sanchez Jr. yesterday welcomed the Department of Interior and Local Govern-ment’s (DILG) decision, calling for a marathon hearing on the usurpation case the deceased official filed against Gov.
Gwendolyn Garcia before Malacañang.

Grezilda “Gigi” Sanchez-Zaballero, daughter of the late vice governor, told a press conference that Jesus Doque IV of the DILG Legal Service had informed her in a letter, dated May 23, that the preliminary conference and formal investigation on the case will be at 2 p.m. on June 6.


Doque said a marathon hearing will be held from June 7 to 9, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the DILG 7 regional office in Cebu City.



Sanchez filed a complaint before the Office of the President on Oct. 29, 2010, accusing Garcia, provincial attorney Marino Martinquilla, provincial administrator Eduardo Habin, provincial treasurer Roy Salubre, Emmanuel Guial and Noli Vincent Valencia of “accroachment of legislative power and grave misconduct or abuse of authority.”

Comply

The complaint was received by the office of Secretary Jessie Robredo of the DILG on Nov. 5, 2010.

Garcia yesterday said she has yet to receive the DILG notice regarding the
preliminary conference and marathon hearings.

She said she only learned about it when somebody showed her a photocopy of the notice.

Once she gets her copy, she said she will comply with it. She added, though, her appearance would depend on what is stated in the order.

“My presence may be represented,” she said.

Tyranny

In the prefatory statement of his complaint, Sanchez said accroachment is “synonymous with seizure, usurpation and infringement.”

“But it goes beyond. It is the exercise of power over rights, which also is a definition of tyranny,” Sanchez’s complaint had stated.

Doque told the Sanchez family to prepare sworn statements of witnesses. He said there will be no postponement of the hearings.

Sanchez-Zaballero said the marathon hearing will add significance to the completion of prayers for her father’s death on June 7.

She said the hearing will be attended by her family and her father’s lawyer, Oliveros Kintanar.

PNoy

Busay, Cebu City Bara-ngay Captain Eliodoro Sanchez, nephew of the late vice governor, said that the DILG order is an offshoot of the visit of President Benigno Aquino III to the wake of Sanchez.

In that visit, Sanchez-Zaballero gave the President a copy of her father’s complaint.

“We have to continue the fight my father (started) because for all you know, these things (accroachment of legislative power by the governor) may happen again. The Vice Governors’ League of the Philippines is even concerned about this,” Sanchez-Zaballero said.

She said newspaper reports show that the governor admitted the alleged usurpation of power.

She cited reports about the governor saying she will return functions of the vice governor’s office when Agnes Magpale, who was a Provincial Board member before Sanchez’s death, assumed the vice gubernatorial seat.

“When you say return or restore, it is already an admission that she has taken the power of the vice governor,” Zaballero said.

In a related development, Sanchez-Zaballero said their camp will fight the electoral protest filed by defeated vice gubernatorial bet Glenn Soco against her father.

“Can anybody say my dad cheated? Definitely none, because if you recall, my dad ran for reelection against all odds and yet he won by a huge margin. What is surprising is that they (Soco and his allies) acted as if they already won in the protest,” she said.

Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on May 28, 2011.