In Filinvest recall case, ‘each day matters’

This refers to Neal H. Cruz’s column titled “Something is rotten in the state of HLURB” (Opinion, 12/2/13). Allow us to set the record straight.

1. The Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) received the recall petition signed by 328 members of Filinvest I Homeowners Association Inc. (Filhai), and duly advised respondents Filhai president Ismael Cabigao and vice president Joseph Anthony Alejandro. The number of signatories, based on village records, comprised 57 percent of Filhai’s members of good standing (meaning, they had no delinquent accounts and were qualified to vote), thus representing the majority, not the minority as Cruz posited.

2. The recall petition involves a nonadversarial case in which the petitioners aver they no longer have trust and confidence in the respondents. The role of HLURB is primarily administrative and ministerial in that it merely determines that the petition is correct in form and substance and that the signatories are properly validated. The Philippine Constitution works under the principle of majority rule; and if the majority makes a decision, all that a government agency can do is validate its authenticity. It cannot and will not make its own ruling on whether that decision is right or wrong.

3. As standard practice, HLURB checked out a sizable sampling (25 percent) of the signatories. In other words, there were 82 validated signatories, not five as Cruz claimed. In fact, more homeowners were waiting in line to be validated, except that the number already obtained was enough for the purpose.

4. Each day is critical in the life of an association. In the case of Filhai, its coffers appeared to have been systematically depleted. In fact, it is now in deep arrears. Again, we ask some of the questions that have been lingering in the minds of many homeowners for months, and which these two officers and their cohorts have largely ignored:

• Is it true that Filhai’s bank deposits have been touched and are now, for the most part, just history?

• Is it true that from a positive cash position of over P4 million at the beginning of the year, Filhai is now in the red by the hundreds of thousands, if not by the millions?

• Is it true that Filhai owes a number of suppliers or service providers multiple debts now collectively running in the millions of pesos?

• Is it true that a hardware supplier sent its lawyer and threatened legal action for unpaid accounts running to several hundred thousand pesos?

• Is it true that the respondents issued Filhai checks to themselves to cover advances they made in payment of liabilities that the association coffers no longer had the funds to cover?

Please note: Any danger that pertinent documents or records may be destroyed, tampered or lost lies with these two officers and their cohorts who refuse to answer legitimate queries from their anxious and worried constituents. So the move to recall these two are extremely urgent and critical, and, indeed, each day matters.

—TONY GUIDOTE,

Filinvest Homes