Malonzo willing to attend House probe on Gotesco land row

Caloocan City Mayor Reynaldo Malonzo expressed willingness to attend the hearings being conducted by the House Committee on Good Government in connection with the alleged anomalous sale of the Ever Gotesco property.

However, Malonzo explained that his attendance would be superfluous because the city government has already sent to the committee all the documents of the sale.

"Other than the voluminous documents we have submitted to the committee, I have nothing to tell them," Malonzo told The STAR in a telephone interview yesterday. "So, they better use the documents as their reference than me."

The members of the committee gave Malonzo five days to explain why he should not be cited for contempt for snubbing the public hearing last Wednesday about the controversial Gotesco property.

Records showed the two-hectare city-owned property, located near the Bonifacio Monumento Circle, was sold to the Gotesco firm for only P8,000 per square-meter or only half of the supposed price of P15,000 per square meter. The government was deprived of about 200 million.

But Malonzo insisted that he "has nothing to do with the sale of the property," noting that he even vetoed the resolution by some of the councilors who authorized the sale in 1997.

Knowing that the sale was disadvantageous to the government, the local chief executive said that he himself filed for the annulment of the sale in court.

"The lower court and the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Gotesco, so we sought the intervention of the Supreme Court, which has yet to make a ruling as of this time. This is why I don’t want to tackle anything about the case for my pronounements could be prejudicial to the case," he stressed.

The mayor also expressed suspicion that some of his rival politicans would use the event (his attendance in the committee) to humiliate him.