The Palawan Report

Got word today that the Court of Appeals has reversed the ruling issued in January by RTC Judge Chito Merigillano suspending the operations of Citinikel in Narra, Southern Palawan.

The appeals court imposed an injunction against the Provincial Mining and Regulatory Board (PMRB) from suspending Citinikel which it had sued for illegal quarrying of sand and gravel.

This case is interesting to follow because Governor Joel T. Reyes blames Citinikel and its mother company, the publicly listed Oriental Peninsula Resources, as being behind the graft case filed by an anonymous NGO group against Reyes now pending in the Sandiganbayan.

Little has been reported on the fact that the camp of Governor Joel T. Reyes had backtracked from the case against Citinikel after he was sued for graft. After Merigillano’s ruling, Reyes reportedly manifested before the courts that the lawyer who handled the case had no authority from the provincial government to file it. It turned out that that particular lawyer was in fact the same counsel for Platinum Group Metals Corp (PGMC) which is embroiled in a lawsuit against Citinikel over who has rights on the Narra mining tenements.

It appears now that the manifestation has weakened the case and allowed Citinikel to convince the CA to reverse Merigillano’s order against Citinikel.

Interesting to note that both key actors in this case - the complainant and the counsel - have left the PMRB after an overhaul engineered by Capitol. The counsel tendered his irrevocable resignation ostensibly so he can concentrate on his private practice (PIO Rolando Bunoan has stated that the resignation by Atty. Bobby Peneyra had nothing to do with the Citinikel case). The complainant in the case, a certain Mark Benedicto Concepcion, who represented the NGO sector was replaced by another controversial choice, Atty. Joselito Alisuag. A side note on Concepcion is the fact that while he represented the NGO sector, he was not really known in the Palawan NGO community.

One way to look at this development is to interpret it as capitulation on the part of Governor Reyes, who may have realized that the favors he had granted to PGMC has made him a target for the apparently powerful Citinikel/Oriental group. Reyes must have realized he did not need the aggravation, and so washing his hands off the Citinikel case may yet allow him to relieve some of the pressure on his own graft case. Let’s see what happens next.