MASBATE COURT CLEARS BATUAN MAYOR

THE re-assumption to office of Batuan, Masbate mayor, Charmax Jay Yuson, has become inevitable after the Masbate Regional Trial Court rejected the ‘motion for reconsideration’ (MR) filed by the prosecution.

In another ruling dated June 10, 2020, a copy of which was provided to this writer, Hon. Arturo Clemente Revil, presiding judge of Branch 50, Masbate RTC, rejected the MR filed six days before by provincial prosecutor Jeremias R. Mapula.

Mapula was assailing the court’s decision dated June 1, 2020, which absolved Yuson from the cases of illegal possession of firearms, ammunition and explosives filed against him by the Philippine National Police.

Based on the evidence presented to the court, it was found that the PNP, thru P/Major Dave E. Mahilum, had resorted to ‘forum shopping’ early last year in order to secure several search warrants that the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) subsequently used to raid the Yuson property in Masbate.

The raiding team purportedly recovered several illegal firearms, ammunition and fragmentation grenades from the Yuson during the raid conducted on February 13, 2019.

The confiscated “evidence” was then used by the PNP to charge Yuson, his father, Charlie and several others for illegal possession of firearms and explosives, the latter a non-bailable offense.

At the time, the family accused controversial personality Sandra Cam and her camp of being behind the raid in order to prevent Charmax from running in the 2019 midterm polls where he trounced Cam’s son, Marco Martin.

In the June 10 decision covering 5-pages, Revil likewise rejected the motion for his inhibition also filed by Mapula, “for being purely based on insinuations, conjectures, hearsay and without factual and legal basis.”

In rejecting the MR, the court likewise noted that the prosecution did not raised “new issues” that would warrant the “reversal or modification of the questioned resolution…”

The court also reminded the police that the pending warrant of arrest against the mayor arising from the charges filed by the police and the provincial prosecutor has also been recalled and invalidated “and need no longer be enforced by the police authorities.”

For their part, Cam, her son Marco Martin, Batuan acting mayor Nelson Cambaya and four other persons underwent last June 8, a preliminary investigation at the Department of Justice.

The camp of Cam has been charged by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) for murder and attempted murder over the broad daylight assassination of Charlie Yuson in Manila last October 9, 2019.

The killing of the elder Yuson occurred after he was dropped from the list of the accused in the cases filed against them by the PNP over last year’s raid in their property.

After his death, Cambaya, as Batuan first councilor, took over as the town’s acting mayor by operation of law, with Charmax forced to go into hiding for fear of his life.

The mayor decided not to surrender, insisting that he would not last 24 hours once he agreed for the police to take him into custody. ###