By Nora Sorino
Iligan City Bureau Chief
ILIGAN City ― In a rare statement broadcasted live by the city’s “own” media outlet Radyo Bandera, Mayor Celso G. Regencia the other day said that a lawyer from Manila told him that he “could still run as mayor of the city.”
Subsequently, in another media outlet Brigada News FM, Councilor Petronilo Pardillo said that CGR is then mulling the possibility of running again for mayor, come 2022 elections. That is because, during the first term of Regencia as mayor, his functions as mayor “were interrupted” due to his being suspended and subsequent imprisonment as he was the principal suspect in the ambush of then-Congressman Vicente Belmonte, Jr, and party, December 11, 2014, near the Laguindingan airport.
Two of the Belmonte’s aides were killed even as the congressman himself came out unscathed except for some minor injuries brought about by broken windshield glasses. The case against the mayor was dismissed though and the mayor was released from prison in the city jail at Tipanoy, this city January 2017.
Lawyer Moises Dalisay Jr. though in an interview over station Edge FM said that the law “expressly” prevents the mayor from running for said position the fourth time.
“This is not just a legal opinion,” he said but a “jurisprudence” citing several Supreme Court decisions on the matter.
He added too even when the mayor was in jail, “he was still functioning as city mayor” following a decision penned by Judge Arthur Abundiente of the Regional Trial Court of Lanao Norte.
It was also learned that the case was refiled as CGR “was not arraigned” in said case.
