Mayor Pinol Dares Tuburan
By Manny Pinol
M’lang Mayor Lito Pinol yesterday virtually doused cold water on former North Cotabato vice governor Jose Tuburan, Jr., who earlier claimed that the Air Transportation Office (ATO) released P450-M as additional payment for the land acquired for the development of M’lang Airport, by declaring that the documents Tuburan presented to the media were all forgeries.
“Peke inang mga dokumento mo. Gusto mo ipusta ang Pep’s Resort mo?,” Mayor Pinol challenged Tuburan during yesterday’s meeting of the provincial monitoring group for the M’lang Airport.
The former vice governor did not accept Mayor Pinol’s challenge of putting the Pep’s Country Bar and Resort area on the line to back up his claim that ATO poured in a huge amount to pay for the land in the airport area.
Tuburan, who earlier accused the Pinol Family of owning one half of the airport area of 64 hectares in Barangay Tawan-tawan, M’lang, claimed that ATO released P450-M to members of the Buenaflor/Cuerpo Families as additional payment for the area acquired by the Provincial Government of North Cotabato in two installments in 2003 and 2004.
This was vehemently denied by former mayor Luigi Cuerpo of M’lang, now a councilor in M’lang, whose name was included in the list of alleged beneficiaries who received P2-M from ATO.
The confrontation happened yesterday after Tuburan submitted documents which he alleged proved that there was additional money from ATO for the airport.
Mayor Pinol said the xeroxed documents in the possession of Tuburan were obviously the same documents presented by a swindler who posed as an ATO employee who came to M’lang last year and fleeced over P100,000 from some owners of the land which was acquired as airport area.
The impostor, according to Mayor Pinol, came to M’lang telling some of the owners of the land earlier acquired by the provincial government as airport area that there was additional funding from ATO for the land and that he could work for the release of the money.
In exchange, he reportedly asked processing fees from the land owners which totaled over P100,00 and after taking the money, the impostor disappeared never to be found.
“Katigulang na sa iya, mailad lang gihapon sang swindler,” Mayor Pinol said later. (It’s unbelievable that at his age, he could still be conned by a swindler.)
Had Tuburan checked, he would have known that the office headed by retired general William Hotchkiss is no longer called ATO because this has been renamed Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) in March 2008 through RA 9497.
In an earlier interview with Radio Station DXCA, Tuburan insinuated that the Pinol Family was involved in questionable transactions in the acquisition of the airport area.
He claimed that one of half of the 64-hectare area is owned by former Gov. Manny Pinol because of a Deed of Sale signed between me and the Buenaflor/Cuerpo Families in 2003.
A second Deed of Sale covering the second half of the airport area was signed between me and the landowners in 2004.
Tuburan claimed that since the first Deed of Sale did not include the phrase “representing the Province of North Cotabato,” I was the real owner of the property.
Mayor Pinol, however, said that documents presented during the M’lang Airport PMG yesterday showed that while the first Deed of Sale did not contain the phrase “representing the Province of North Cotabato,” the provincial government voucher which released the payment for the property indicated all the lot numbers of the area acquired by the province.
“The missing phrase should not be blamed on Gov. Pinol who signed the documents in good faith as Governor of the province. This was actually a mis-look on the part of the lawyer (Atty. Freddie Baynosa) who prepared the Deed of Sale,” Mayor Pinol said.
Instead of making a big issue over a missing phrase in the Deed of Sale, Mayor Pinol urged the M’lang Airport PMG to fasttrack the processing of the papers to ensure that the airport project will be completed on time.
Last Friday, Tuburan went on air over DXCA accusing me of being the real owner of one half of the airport which prompted me to confront him right in his Pep’s Country Bar and Resort in Barangay Balindog, Kidapawan City.
I later proceeded to the Kidapawan City police station to have the incident where he and two commentators of DXCA maligned me, recorded in the police blotter.
This week, my lawyers will prepare a multi-million peso libel suit against Tuburan and the two radio commentators for maligning me and my family and comparing us to Janet Lim Napoles.
They publicly ridiculed me and my family using a set of forged documents produced by a swindler as their proof.
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