Cotabato town exec shuns arrest after posting bail for falsification case

KIDAPAWAN CITY-– A town vice mayor in North Cotabato posted bail at a local court here before police operatives could arrest him, reports said.The arrest was supposed to take place Tuesday morning after operatives of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) in North Cotabato could serve the court’s warrant to Makilala municipal vice-mayor Ricky Cua.Cua, court records showed, posted some P24 thousand as bail for his temporary liberty.Cua is facing falsification of public documents after he allegedly submitted reports of his purchases of some 300 pairs of eyeglasses for senior citizens in early 2013, months before the May 2013 local elections.Accordingly, such purchases were overpriced.Bimbo Estrella, one of the senior citizens who received such pair of eyeglasses, filed the complaint after the elections in 2013. I just heard in one of the rallies against Vice-Mayor Cua that the pairs of eyeglasses he distributed to our group were overpriced.I felt betrayed.So what I did, after Cua won the elections, I immediately filed charges at the Ombudsman, said Estrella.Estrella, in an interview, expressed his ‘positive reception’ after he learned that after four years of waiting, finally, the court has issued an order to arrest Cua. Hindi pala natutulog ang kaso, he said.