BUKIDNON Governor Jose Maria Zubiri Jr. has asked the Office of the Ombudsman to review its decision after it ordered him suspended for six months.
The order supposedly suspended Zubiri for grave abuse of authority amounting to oppression and violation of a section of Republic Act 6713.
The Ombudsman based its ruling on the case of Carlos Ycaro, a former Provincial Government employee, which accused the governor of refusing to sign his clearance and his request for commutation.
But in a statement, Zubiri said he was not the provincial governor at the time, that is, from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2013.
“How can I sign his clearance and act on his request for leave commutation in January 2013 then? The person to sign his clearance and act on his request would have been the incumbent governor of the province, then Governor Alex P. Calingasan. Clearly, this statement has no basis at all,” Zubiri said.
The reason for not clearing Ycaro, Zubiri said, was that the former could not account for chairs owned by the local government unit of Bukidnon amounting to P3.25 million and the electrification, installation, and supply of equipment with total of P8.1 million, of which only P868,472 was only accounted.
On Ycaro’s leave commutation, aside from the fact that Zubiri was not the proper person to act on his application, the governor said there was no showing that the requirements for such request were complied.
Zubiri added that if he were the proper authority to sign Ycaro’s clearance and act on his request, “prudence and my conscience would dictate that I would rather not sign due to the fact of his ‘unaccounted’ items which are valued in millions.”
Zubiri said he also take offense to the fact that the said statement from the Ombudsman was already released even before Zubiri received a copy of the resolution.
“On the contrary the charges we filed against Mr. Ycaro before the Office of the Obmdusman-Davao have not been acted yet and no update to this moment has been received by the Provincial Government of Bukidnon,” he added.
He clarified that in his 28 years in public service he has not oppressed anybody and in fact he has even defended the province’s indigenous peoples and the poor.
