Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda last night said a briefer prepared for his team’s visit to Negros Occidental said that Commission on Audit chairperson, Maria Gracia Pulido-Tan, had inhibited herself from the COA review of the sale and lease of the 7.7-hectare provincial government property in Bacolod City to AyalaLand Inc.

However, in a meeting with Governor Alfredo Marañon Jr. yesterday morning, he was informed that it is not true, Lacierda said.

“We will ask the COA chairperson if she really inhibited and if there was a formal declaration of inhibition,” he said.

“Our understanding is that Chairman Grace Tan has inhibited herself over the concern that the law firm of her husband is the lawyer for the Sys,” he said.

The Sy family owns SM Prime Holdings that is opposing the Capitol’s sale and lease of its property to AyalaLand.

But Lacierda also stressed that the COA is an independent Constitutional body and the Office of the President can not impose on it. Marañon, business leaders, and town and city mayors in Negros Occidental have aired complaints against the COA delay in coming up with a decision on its review of the sale and lease of the Capitol property that was submitted to it for action in July last year.

Early this month, the governor said the Capitol was de-prioritizing the sale of its property to AyalaLand that would have generated economic growth and employment for the province, because of the COA’s inaction.

AyalaLand also announced that it was focusing its development plans and resources on other projects in Negros Occidental in the light of the COA delay.

The SM Prime Holdings Inc. has a pending petition before the Bacolod Regional Trial Court seeking the annulment of any negotiated sale and lease by the provincial government property to AyaLand, and for SMPHI to be declared the winner of the July 7 bidding of the 7.7-hectare property.

Marañon, however, has insisted that the action of the province was above-board, and SMPHI did not win the July 7 bidding for the property, because, like Ayala, it had entered a bid below the floor price set.

That is why a negotiated bidding was held, in which SMPHI refused to participate, so the sale and lease was awarded to AyalaLand, he said.*CPG

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