CITY OF SAN FERNANDO — The Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Malolos, Bulacan has declared “null and void” a local law that hurriedly changed the name of a provincial road from Andres Bonifacio to a controversial cigarette brand that figured in a tax controversy in Barangay Tikay in Malolos in 2014.
RTC Branch 81 Judge Hermenegildo Dumlao II declared Provincial Ordinance No. 10-2014 which changed the name of the Bonifacio Road to Mighty Road as “null and void and without legal effect,” saying it contravened Republic Act No. 10066 or the National Cultural Heritage Act of 2009.
The judge said the local ordinance, approved by the Bulacan Sangguniang Panlalawigan and signed by Gov. Wilhelmino Sy-Alvarado who were named respondents in the case, also violated the revised guidelines on naming and renaming of streets, public schools, plazas, buildings, bridges and other public structures of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP).
In issuing a writ of mandatory injunction against the resolution, Dumlao also ordered the removal of the signages of Mighty Road on “affected portions of the road traversing Barangay Tikay, Malolos City, Bulacan and to return the name of the said affected portion to the original name of Andres Bonifacio Street.”
The case was filed last year by Adoracion Angeles, a judge who lives along the road in Tikay who, in her complaint, said the ordinance passed on Sept. 30, 2014 was “upon the behest of retired judge Oscar Barrientos who was the executive vice president of the cigarette fiRm Mighty Corporation.”
She said the “urgent request” of Barrientos to change the road’s name was in preparation for the celebration of the 70th founding anniversary of his firm.
The complainant also noted that Mighty Corporation was facing “serious and nagging problems at that time with the Bureau of Internal Revenue for alleged fraud and fraudulent entries and payment of taxes less than the amount legally due as early as 2011…”
Angeles also said residents of Barangay Tikay were never consulted in the change of their road’s name.
She said naming their road after the cigarette brand was “very demeaning, humiliating, insulting, damaging and injurious to the herein plaintiff and to the latter’s barangaymates” and that it affected the “heritage, dignity and honor of the entire people of Barangay Tikay.”
Dumlao, however, junked the petition for the defendants to pay moral, exemplary, actual and other damages.
