The 2nd Impeachment

CEBU CITY – The lawyer of former Mandaue City Mayor Thadeo Ouano yesterday raised suspicion that the decision of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez to refile at the Sandiganbayan the graft charges against the former mayor and several other officials involved in the lamppost scandal was prompted by her impending impeachment at the House of Representatives.

Lawyer Dennis Añover, the Manila-based lawyer of Ouano, questioned the timing of the refilling of the case at a time when Gutierrez was facing impeachment.

Añover said Gutierrez might just be putting up a show that she was acting on the cases filed at her office.

“I have a feeling that because of the pending impeachment case against the Ombudsman, she is under pressure to file whatever cases she feels necessary to somehow lessen the heat off her…,” Añover said.

He said he was surprised that the graft cases against Ouano were refiled when the Office of the Ombudsman had withdrawn the cases and that its prosecutors assigned to the case even admitted that they had no case at all.

Ouano, Lapu-lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza and nine regional executives of the Department of Public Works and Highways faced graft charges at the Sandigan last year after they were linked to the overpricing of the lampposts installed in Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-lapu cities for the 12th Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) Summit held in Cebu in January 2007.

But a division of the Sandiganbayan said it found the evidence insufficient and ordered the graft cases dismissed early this year without prejudice to refiling the cases once new pieces of evidence were found.

The Office of the Ombudsman decided to refile the cases after completing its reinvestigation.

Añover said he was instructed by Ouano to study the alleged new pieces of evidence attached to the refiled case.

Añover said he had not seen the copy of the complaint but assumed that the refiled case was related to the case filed at the 4th division of the Sandiganbayan that was withdrawn by the Ombudsman.

If there will be no new piece of evidence, the case must be dismissed because the prosecutor of the Ombudsman had admitted that graft prosecutors have no case, Añover said.