Paracelis, Mountain Province elected Vice Mayor Djarma Rafael will sit as acting mayor after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) En Banc failed to resolve the disqualification case of the winning mayor before the assumption of office of local officials on June 30.
“You, as vice mayor of said municipality, shall assume the Office of the Mayor in an acting capacity without prejudice to the Comelec’s resolution of the Motion for Reconsideration,” Regional Director of Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Araceli San Jose said in a letter.
The politiko was the one who sought a legal opinion from the DILG to dispel confusion among the public.
The certificate of candidacy of elected and proclaimed mayor Avelino Amangyen was nullified by the Second Division of the Comelec on April 19, 2022, before the elections, and declared him ineligible because of misrepresentation in his certificate of candidacy for nondisclosure of a previous conviction for violation of the Forestry Code which carried a penalty of Reclusion Temporal and an accessory penalty of perpetual disqualification to hold public office.
