Negrense is new labor partylist rep

BACOLOD CITY , Philippines   — Roland de la Cruz, a Negrense from Murcia town in Negros Occidental, will be the newest member of the 16th Congress when it opens its second regular session on July 28.

The 39-year-old De la Cruz was the first nominee of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines  partylist, the country’s largest labor group that got about 380,000 votes nationwide in the last May 13 elections to earn one seat in the House of Representatives.

TUCP spokesperson Raffy Mapalo announced in a press statement that De la Cruz is replacing Raymond Democrito Mendoza as TUCP partylist’s representative.

Mapalo said the Court of Appeals had upheld with finality Ernesto Herrera’s assumption of the post of TUCP president, thus affirming as valid all acts the latter performed as chief executive of the national labor center.

“Among Herrera’s actions that the CA effectively legitimated was the designation of de la Cruz as TUCP’s first partylist nominee in the 2013 elections,” Mapalo said, adding that De la Cruz is deputy general secretary of the 80,000-strong National Congress of Unions in the Sugar Industry of the Philippines.

In a resolution promulgated last June 16, the CA also declared as “void from the start” all acts performed by resigned TUCP president Democrito Mendoza Sr., including his act of designating his own son, Raymond, as the party-list’s first nominee in the 2013 elections. “We just received our copy of the CA resolution,” Mapalo said.

Mapalo recalled that after 38 years as TUCP president, the elder Mendoza, now 91, voluntarily resigned from his post on November 1, 2011. “Mendoza’s resignation, conveyed in writing, was accepted by TUCP’s national executive board, and the then general secretary Herrera automatically succeeded Mendoza, based on TUCP’s constitution and by-laws,” he said.

However, Mapalo said the elder Mendoza later recalled his resignation at the prodding of his son, thus setting off a dispute that the CA resolved in a ruling first promulgated on October 7, last year.

In that verdict, the CA upheld Herrera as TUCP president, saying that the former two-term senator validly assumed the post of president when Mendoza effectively quit his post on his own accord. “The new CA ruling merely affirmed its previous decision sustaining Herrera as TUCP president, and denied Mendoza’s motion for reconsideration,” Mapalo said.   

The CA also ordered the Department of Labor and Employment to ensure that Herrera and other duly-designated officers, “shall have full use and access to the TUCP offices including its equipment, facilities, papers, properties in Quezon City and located elsewhere, as may be necessary in the discharge of official duties, without interruption or disruption.”

Referring to the DOLE, the court added: “Public respondents are also ordered to sanction, in accordance with existing laws and applicable regulations, any TUCP member or agent who obstructs, delays or defeats the enforcement of this decision.”

Mendoza previously padlocked TUCP’s Diliman, Quezon City headquarters, forcing Herrera and other officers and staff to temporarily hold office in Manila.  (FREEMAN)