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MANDAUE CITY, Philippines - Some faculty and staff of the Mandaue City College (MCC), as well as students and their parents, intend to file a class action suit against Mayor Jonas Cortes for closing the school?s campus in Barangay (village) Ibabao last Friday, which they said was illegal.
Paulus Mariae Cañete said charges would include grave misconduct and abuse of authority.
Cañete, who insisted that he was still MCC president despite Cortes? announcement that his contract ended in December 2006, said the mayor?s actions were without notice and was done by force, causing injury to at least two students.
?This is very serious matter. We won?t let this pass. This is abuse of authority,? Cañete said.
Last Monday, Cortes filed two cases against Cañete: malversation of public funds for allegedly refusing to turn over the school?s finances and financial records to the city, and for violation of the Election Code when he hired those who lost in the May 2007 elections as school faculty and staff.
Arjie Boy Cacdac, a political science student of MCC, said he would file separate charges against a policeman identified only as ?Alcoseba? for allegedly mauling him.
Cacdac said he was one of the students who tried to get into the city-owned school facility last Friday in an attempt to get some school records.
He said some of the mayor?s personnel ?ransacked? some offices, destroyed door locks and changed it with their own.
?I tried to force my way through, but a policeman choked me. We wanted to get through because we were afraid they might get our files,? he said.
Some MCC faculty and staff loyal to Cañete as well as some students have been keeping vigil outside the barricaded school building since Friday, when Cortes closed the school building and turned it over to the Mandaue City National Science High School (MCNSHS).
A brief confrontation occurred during the turnover when police and City Hall security personnel prevented some students from trying to enter the school campus.
A day later, students who kept vigil outside the campus set up a mock grave with a defaced picture of Cortes along the perimeter wall of MCC.
Some of the students discontinued their vigil yesterday after a dialog with Representative Nerissa Soon-Ruiz (Cebu, 6th district), Councilor Victor Biaño and Doctor Susana Cabahug, who was appointed by Cortes last year to be the MCC caretaker after Cañete was ordered to step down.
The students agreed to join others who were already holding classes at the Mandaue City Sports Complex, which the mayor designated as a temporary place of operations for MCC, as long as the students? records that were still in the old MCC campus are released and transferred to the MCC operations at the sports complex.
