ACT plea mere ‘publicity stunt’: DILG

He said the Court’s decision proves that the alleged profiling or police crackdown on their group is a figment of their imagination designed to draw more media attention as the election nears. (File Photo: Jonathan Malaya/Facebook)

MANILA — The appeal filed by the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) before the Court of Appeals (CA) seeking to reverse the junking of its petition to stop the PNP’s supposed conduct surveillance and profiling of public and private school teachers is a plain act to draw attention for the elections, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) said on Tuesday.

“The motion for reconsideration filed by the ACT Party-list (PL) group with the Court of Appeals is clearly a publicity stunt meant to draw attention to their group because of the election season. The original petition was already dismissed and yet ACT PL wishes to beat a dead horse. We appeal to ACT PL to stop politicizing this issue just to earn votes from the public,” DILG Undersecretary and spokesperson Jonathan Malaya said in a statement.

He said the Court’s decision proves that the alleged profiling or police crackdown on their group is a figment of their imagination designed to draw more media attention as the election nears.

“While the courts have relaxed the rules in several cases, the procedural infirmities and errors in the ACT PL’s petition are too basic and too fundamental to be ignored. It will be a great injustice for our law enforcement agencies to be stymied in the performance of their duties by the filing of frivolous and half-baked court petitions that clearly violate the Rules of Court,” Malaya explained.

With this, Malaya is confident that ACT’s plea will also be dismissed.

“We encourage the leaders of ACT to instead clarify matters with Mr. Joma Sison who was the one who tagged them as a communist front in their armed conflict instead of seeking recourse from the very institutions they seek to overthrow,” he noted.

Last month, the appellate court’s 11th Division cited shortcomings in ACT’s petition, including its failure to include certified true copies of the memoranda supposedly issued by the PNP’s intelligence units.

The court also cited the failure of ACT to state material dates in their petition, specifically the dates when the petitioners received the various assailed PNP memoranda.

It stressed that the petition likewise did not include the “current date of issuance of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines membership number of the petitioners’ counsel” and “the current date of issuance of the Professional Tax Number of the petitioners’ counsel” in violation of Bar Matter No. 287 dated Sept. 26, 2000 and Bar Matter No. 1132 dated Nov. 12, 2002, respectively.