DILG backs Vico, says NBI action against him a 'useless political distraction'

Summoning Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto was a political distraction during this time of health crisis, Department of the Interior and Local Government spokesman said Thursday.

"This act of summoning the mayor of Pasig is a useless political distraction on at this time when all of us are preparing and all of us cooperate to beat the COVID-19 crisis that we are in," DILG spokesman Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya told CNN.

On Wednesday, National Bureau of Investigation Deputy Director and spokesman Ferdinand Lavin confirmed that the anti-graft division sent a letter to Sotto inviting him to appear at the NBI's main office on April 7.

Lavin said Sotto supposedly violated national government policies imposing strict quarantine under the "Bayanihan to Heal As One Act."

According to Sotto, NBI's order was in relation to the operation of tricycles in Pasig City.

However, according to NBI Deputy Director Ferdinand Lavin, Sotto violated a March 16 memorandum by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea  prohibiting public mass transport in light of the Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine.

But the mayor insisted that Pasig City already complied with the government's directive on the prohibition of all mass transportation including tricycles.

Netizens, meanwhile, came to the defense of Sotto. Shortly after news of the NBI summon hit the headlines, #ProtectVico landed at the top of Twitter global trends.

Case closed

As far as the DILG is concerned, the issue on the use of tricycles was already solved, according to Malaya

Malaya admitted that there had been miscommunication and exchange of views between the DILG and Sotto before, but he said the mayor has already complied with the agency's orders.

"The mayor of Pasig was already cooperative," Malaya said. "No issue in so far as the DILG is concerned now."

Sotto earlier pointed out that the law did not exist when the tricycle issue cropped up.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra already said "penal provisions of any law are not applied retroactively unless the offense is a continuing one and its commission has not been stopped." —LBG, GMA News