Mabilog: I do not claim victory over anyone

ILOILO CITY — Jed Patrick E. Mabilog received the Sandiganbayan resolution dismissing his graft case on Aug. 15, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and read the date as one more marker in a sequence he has been keeping for years.

“At the end of the day, truth will always prevail, and justice will find its way. God is good all the time,” the undersecretary of the Department of the Interior and Local Government said in a statement sent to the Daily Guardian.

The resolution he received says nothing about truth.

It says the Office of the Ombudsman took seven years, 10 months, and seven days to bring the charge to court, and that the delay was long enough to extinguish the case without anyone examining the evidence.

“I receive the official copy of the Sandiganbayan’s granting of the Motion to Quash and dismissal of the case with profound gratitude and humility,” Mabilog said. “After years of trials, exile, prayers, and waiting, I have learned that God’s time is always the right time.”

He listed the dates he considers significant: a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guadalupe in December 2023, his return to the Philippines in September 2024 on the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the grant of executive clemency, his oath as undersecretary on May 13, and the arrival of the court’s copy on Aug. 15.

“I do not claim victory over anyone,” he said. “Only God knows the whole truth, and only Jesus has the ultimate authority to judge. My prayer is simply: Father, Your will be done.”

Mabilog thanked President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla, Iloilo City Rep. Julienne Baronda and her family, and what he described as friends from the Senate and Congress who helped secure his return.

“I have learned my lessons well: choose your company wisely, remain faithful, forgive, repent, and return to God,” he said.

He said his focus from here is service, listing patriotism, integrity and dangal, professionalism, knowledge, and accountability.

THE CASE

Eleven years after a complaint was filed over a towing contract at Iloilo City Hall, the criminal case it produced has ended for one of the two men accused.

The Sandiganbayan Third Division dismissed the graft case against Mabilog, a former Iloilo City mayor and now undersecretary for public safety, on Aug. 12, 2026.

Mabilog left the country in 2017, months after the Ombudsman dismissed him as mayor and imposed perpetual disqualification in a separate administrative case over unexplained wealth, and after the Duterte administration named him among local officials it accused of links to the illegal drug trade. He denied that accusation and returned in September 2024.

In April 2014, the Sangguniang Panlungsod approved an ordinance allowing the use of wheel clamps against illegally parked vehicles.

In January 2015, the city government signed a memorandum of agreement with 3L Towering Services to carry out the clamping and towing.

Under that agreement, the firm would keep 70% of the fines collected and the city 30%.

Manuel Mejorada filed the first complaint-affidavit in April 2015, alleging violations of Sections 3(e) and 3(g) of Republic Act No. 3019.

The origin of the charge that actually reached trial is the strangest feature of the record.

Plaridel Nava II, then a city councilor and the principal sponsor of the clamping ordinance, told the Ombudsman that Mabilog owned 3L. His supplemental complaint-affidavit of Sept. 8, 2015, produced the Section 3(h) charge.

Three days later, Mabilog filed his own complaint against Nava.

The Ombudsman ultimately charged both, on the theory that they acted together.

The Ombudsman alleged that the towing company was Mabilog’s.

According to the Information, he contributed PHP 500,000 as its initial capital, installed Leny B. Garcia as a dummy owner, and issued the firm its business and mayor’s permits although Garcia never applied for them.

It also alleged the agreement was awarded without a competitive process.

Both men were charged with a single count of violating Section 3(h) of Republic Act No. 3019, the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, which penalizes a public officer who holds a financial interest in a transaction and then intervenes in it officially.

THE DELAY

Section 16, Article III of the 1987 Constitution guarantees every person a speedy disposition of cases before all judicial, quasi-judicial, and administrative bodies.

The Ombudsman Act of 1989 separately requires the agency to act promptly on complaints.

The Sandiganbayan broke the wait into four stages.

It took one year, four months, and two days from the last pleading for the Ombudsman to issue its Consolidated Resolution.

It took another one year, eight months, and 19 days from the last motion for reconsideration to issue a Consolidated Order that ran two pages and merely affirmed the earlier ruling.

It then took two years, 10 months, and 21 days to approve the Information, and another nine months and 11 days to file it in court.

Measured from Mejorada’s complaint of April 23, 2015, to the filing of the Information on March 2, 2023, the total was seven years, 10 months, and seven days.

The prosecution blamed layers of internal review, the shuttling of records between the Ombudsman’s Visayas office in Cebu City and the central office during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the handover from Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales to Samuel R. Martires.

The court accepted the first explanation and rejected the rest.

It called the unexplained two-year gap in approving the Information alarming, and said the Ombudsman had utterly failed to justify the delay.

On the leadership transition it was blunt: Martires signed the Information himself, so his newness could not explain why it sat unfiled.

The majority leaned on People v. Moreno, a 2024 Supreme Court ruling that found a delay of nine months and four days between resolution and filing unjustified.

The gap here was nine months and 11 days, a difference of seven days.

MABILOG’S ARGUMENTS

Mabilog raised two arguments, and the court rejected the first and accepted the second.

He argued the Information should be quashed because the evidence did not support it.

The court said that confuses a motion to quash with a demurrer to evidence.

An accused who moves to quash hypothetically admits the allegations and may only attack defects apparent on the face of the charge, and ruling on the strength of the evidence before trial would prejudge the case.

The court went further and held that, taken as true, the allegations establish every element of Section 3(h) against Mabilog.

His second argument, inordinate delay, carried the day.

The case ended on the clock, not on the facts.

Because dismissal on speedy-disposition grounds is a dismissal on the merits for double jeopardy purposes, the charge cannot be refiled.

The underlying question of whether Mabilog owned 3L Towering Services will now never be answered by a court.

Two justices wrote separately.

Ronald B. Moreno concurred that the Information was sufficient but dissented on the delay, arguing the prosecution had adequately explained it and that Mabilog waited too long to complain, invoking the right only in October 2024.

J. Ermin Ernest Louie R. Miguel said length alone does not decide the question and that all the circumstances had to be weighed.

TIMELINE

Date	Event
April 8, 2014	Sangguniang Panlungsod approves the ordinance allowing the use of wheel clamps on illegally parked vehicles.
Jan. 20, 2015	Iloilo City government signs a memorandum of agreement with 3L Towering Services for clamping and towing. The firm keeps 70% of fines collected, the city 30%.
April 23, 2015	Manuel Mejorada files the first complaint-affidavit against Mabilog, alleging violations of Sections 3(e) and 3(g) of Republic Act No. 3019.
Aug. 12, 2015	Ombudsman-Visayas receives Mabilog’s counter-affidavit.
Sept. 8, 2015	Nava files a supplemental affidavit-complaint alleging Section 3(h). This is the charge that reaches trial.
Sept. 11, 2015	Mabilog files his own complaint-affidavit against Nava under Sections 3(a), 3(h), and 3(i).
Nov. 26, 2015	Ombudsman-Visayas receives Nava’s counter-affidavit, the last pleading in the preliminary investigation.
March 28, 2017	Ombudsman issues its Consolidated Resolution finding probable cause. One year, four months, and two days have passed.
Oct. 3 and 9, 2017	Mabilog and Nava separately move for reconsideration.
June 28, 2019	Ombudsman issues a two-page Consolidated Order affirming the resolution. One year, eight months, and 19 days have passed.
May 19, 2022	The Information is dated and signed. Two years, 10 months, and 21 days have passed.
March 2, 2023	The Information is filed with the Sandiganbayan. Another nine months and 11 days have passed. Total elapsed time: seven years, 10 months, and seven days.
Oct. 9, 2023	Sandiganbayan denies Nava’s motion to quash.
May 23, 2024	Nava files a demurrer to evidence without leave of court.
May 28, 2024	Nava’s case is submitted for decision.
Sept. 10, 2024	Mabilog returns to the Philippines and surrenders to the National Bureau of Investigation. He posts PHP 90,000 bail.
Oct. 29, 2024	Mabilog files his motion to quash, dated Oct. 10, citing inordinate delay.
Jan. 15, 2025	President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. grants Mabilog executive clemency on the separate administrative case.
Feb. 6, 2025	Sandiganbayan orders Nava’s case reopened to align with the ongoing proceedings involving Mabilog.
July 29, 2025	The court denies Nava’s motion for reconsideration of the reopening.
May 13, 2026	Mabilog takes his oath as DILG undersecretary for public safety.
Aug. 12, 2026	Sandiganbayan dismisses the case against Mabilog. It declines to rule on Nava.

 

WHAT HAPPENS TO NAVA’S CASE

The Sandiganbayan pointedly refused to say.

It acknowledged that quashing the Information as to Mabilog may bear upon Nava, then said it would wait for Nava to file the appropriate motion and for the prosecution to respond before deciding what its ruling means for him.

Nava is not automatically free for one reason: The right to a speedy disposition of cases is personal. It is not a defect in the Information that voids the charge for everyone named in it. Each accused must invoke it, and each invocation is judged on its own record.

On the raw reckoning, Nava’s position looks identical to Mabilog’s.

The same complaints, the same Consolidated Resolution, the same two-page Consolidated Order, and the same Information governed both parties. Nava filed his motion for reconsideration on Oct. 9, 2017, six days after Mabilog.

Every interval the court counted applies to Nava as well. His procedural history is where the two men diverge, and not in his favor.

Mabilog raised inordinate delay in a motion to quash filed before his arraignment. That timing was decisive: the court held he had asserted the right at the earliest opportunity and had not slept on it.

Nava did not move to quash in 2023, arguing the facts alleged did not constitute an offense, and lost on Oct. 9, 2023.

He was arraigned, went to trial, and on May 23, 2024, filed a demurrer to evidence without leave of court. The court submitted the case for decision five days later.

A demurrer filed without leave carries a high cost under Rule 119 of the Revised Rules of Criminal Procedure. If the court denies it, the accused loses the right to present evidence, and the court decides the case on the prosecution’s evidence alone.

There is a further complication: on Feb. 6, 2025, the Third Division ordered his case reopened, explaining that this was necessary to align with the ongoing proceedings involving Mabilog, who had just returned from abroad to face trial.

Nava fought the reopening and argued, among other things, that it would violate his own right to a speedy disposition.

The court denied his motion for reconsideration on July 29, 2025, in a resolution penned by Moreno, noting that no decision had yet been promulgated and that reopening was within its discretion.

Mabilog is now out of the case, which means the stated reason for reopening Nava’s case was to align it with proceedings that no longer exist. Whether that basis survives is an open question the court has not addressed.

Three paths are now realistically available to Nava.

He can file the motion the court invited, arguing that the same Ombudsman delay violated his own constitutional right, and confront the objection that he raised it far later than Mabilog did.

He can push for judgment on his demurrer, accepting that the court will decide on the prosecution’s evidence alone.

Or the prosecution can move to dismiss, though it has given no indication that it intends to.

Nava wrote on his Facebook account, which he maintains under a different name, that the Sandiganbayan ruling does not close the matter. He posted a day after the resolution was reported.

“Mind you, I still have a pending petition with the Supreme Court challenging Mabilog’s presidential pardon,” he wrote. “Who knows. There might be some reckoning.”

Marcos granted Mabilog clemency in January 2025 on a separate administrative case, reversing the perpetual disqualification the Ombudsman imposed in 2017 and restoring his eligibility for public office.

Nava filed his petition weeks later.

He said Mabilog’s supporters had begun suggesting the former mayor could seek office in 2028 without impediment, and cautioned against treating the dismissal as settled vindication.

“The dismissal of all cases against him, however, doesn’t mean he is innocent of all charges,” Nava wrote. “It doesn’t mean he is clean. It doesn’t mean he has not committed graft and corruption.”

 

THE BIGGER PICTURE

The Iloilo towing case is now a case study in what institutional delay costs.

The Ombudsman found probable cause in 2017. It took until 2023 to bring the charge to court, and until 2026 for a court to throw it out without examining a single piece of evidence against the principal accused.

Nothing in the ruling suggests bad faith. The court itself acknowledged the reality of institutional delay at the Ombudsman.

That is the point. Ordinary bureaucratic slowness, compounded across four stages, was enough to extinguish a graft case against a sitting undersecretary of the interior department.

The complainant who started it is still an accused. The accused who left the country is now a national official. The company at the center of it stopped operating years ago.

Eleven years on, the record contains a great many dates and no findings.