A sitting party-list representative has been benched from Congress for 90 days over allegations that he steered nearly ₱200 million in Department of Public Works and Highways money to a construction firm he had a financial stake in — a case that lands squarely in the middle of a national reckoning over exactly that kind of arrangement.
The Sandiganbayan Sixth Division ordered the 90-day preventive suspension of Rep. James "Jojo" Ang Dit Ang Jr. of the Uswag Ilonggo party-list on Sept. 21, covering his House seat and any other public office he holds or may hold while the case is pending, according to PhilStar.com. The order follows 14 counts of graft the Office of the Ombudsman filed against Ang on July 25 under Section 3(h) of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (Republic Act No. 3019) — the provision that bars public officials from having a financial interest in any contract or business their office intersects with.
Prosecutors allege Ang held a pecuniary interest in Allencon Development Corporation, a construction company that landed roughly ₱214 million in DPWH contracts and collected about ₱199 million in payments while he sat in Congress. That is the plain arithmetic of the case: a lawmaker with a stake in a contractor, and a contractor with a government check nearly as large as the interest itself.
The Sandiganbayan did not treat the suspension as a discretionary call. Citing Section 13 of RA 3019, the court noted that once a valid criminal information has been filed, suspension is automatic — the law leaves no room for the court to weigh whether it's warranted. "The court trying a case has neither discretion nor duty to determine whether preventive suspension is required," the ruling states. In plainer terms: the moment the graft charges cleared the filing bar, Ang's suspension became a formality, not a judgment call the court had to agonize over — the discretion question was settled by Congress decades ago, not by this bench.
The underlying graft charges — 14 separate counts — remain unresolved, and the suspension is preventive rather than a finding of guilt. Ang has not been quoted in available reporting responding to the ruling or the underlying allegations.
Context
The case arrives as the DPWH remains the central agency in the country's flood-control kickback scandal, which has already produced a plunder indictment against former House Speaker Martin Romualdez and a parade of contractor and lawmaker cases before the Sandiganbayan. Ang's case is not part of that flood-control conspiracy as alleged — the contracts at issue are separate DPWH awards to Allencon — but it lands in the same pattern regulators and prosecutors have flagged repeatedly this year: lawmakers with undisclosed financial ties to the contractors doing business with the same infrastructure agency Congress is supposed to oversee. RA 3019's Section 3(h) exists precisely to close that loophole; whether it's enforced consistently, rather than case by case after the fact, remains the open question.
Sources
- Sandiganbayan suspends Uswag Ilonggo Rep. Ang 90 days — PhilStar.com