Taguig residents to guard filing of recall

Some 500 residents of Taguig are expected to provide security to the officials of the Preparatory Recall Assembly (PRA) who are set to file today a recall petition against incumbent Mayor Sigfrido "Freddie" Tinga before the local Commission on Election (Comelec).

"We are mobilizing because there could be another blockade by the mayor’s supporters," Taguig-Pateros Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano told The STAR in a telephone interview yesterday.

Cayetano said apart from the petition, the assembly officers will also submit today a "thick" volume of reports prepared by representatives of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) who were present at the PRA held early this month.

However, Ana Santos, municipal information officer, dismissed Cayetano’s claim of a blockade as mere "black propaganda."

"The mayor’s supporters will not set up a blockade. It’s their right to file a recall petition so why should we stop them?" Santos said.

She added that it is up to election officer Armando Vencilao to verify the legality of the documents as well as the assembly itself.

On Sept. 1, some 200 supporters of Tinga allegedly blocked the road toward the IMP Sea Breeze Resort at the Bay Breeze Executive Village in Barangay Hagonoy and delayed the assembly for at least two hours. The PRA members, along with Cayetano, were forced to hold the assembly at a waiting shed near the subdivision’s entrance. Earlier that afternoon, a handful of barangay officials sympathetic to Tinga also held their own assembly at the resort. They said they were the ones barred from entering the resort.

Vencilao has the task of verifying the authenticity of the signatures of the 84 barangay officials who signed the resolution calling for Tinga’s ouster.

Barangay officials, led by Taguig Liga ng mga Barangay president Henry Dueñas Sr., submitted to the Comelec yesterday the result of a legally held PRA.

Dueñas said they decided to submit the minutes, photos and video footage of their own PRA to disprove Cayetano’s claim that 84 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan officials voted for the recall of the mayor.

"We want to set the record straight. The congressman has no basis in saying that 84 officials in their illegally held assembly voted for a recall," he said. – Nikko Dizon