AFTER the testimony of former CIDG chief and PCSO ex-general general manager Royina Marzan Garma before the House of Representatives Quad Committee last Thursday, September 12, 2024, she was cited in contempt and ordered detained until the committee would finish its hearings or reverse its order.
The immediate reason was that Garma denied her “close and special” relations with Rodrigo Duterte, which allegedly secured for her the important positions she occupied during his administration (2016-2022) when he was president.
She was “lying and evading questions,” the contempt citation said.
CEBU CONNECTION. Garma at the House committee hearing was interesting national news. To Cebu news consumers, what’s happening to Royina Garma must also be newsworthy in the community or local sense.
Garma was appointed Cebu City police director on July 1, 2018, retired from PNP on July 11, 2019. Fifteen days later, she joined PCSO or Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office as general manager.
While in Cebu City, she was a controversial public figure as she frequently tangled with then mayor Tomas Osmeña, and vice versa, on hot issues, including police moves that allegedly favored Osmeña’s rival for the city mayor’s seat in the 2019 campaign.
QUESTION OF BEING ‘CLOSE, SPECIAL.’ At the Quad Committee hearing, Representative Stephen Paduano asked Garma why she opted for early retirement when she still had 10 years before her mandatory exit from PNP. She was police director of Cebu City, a “juicy” assignment — just as her posting before that, as Davao City police chief — was also prime posting. And what followed the Cebu City tour of duty was even more juicy.
“Are you close to the President?” asked Paduano. All your positions are juicy, commented another lawmaker. “We’re not close,” Garma said, “because I was fired… even placed on floating (status).” Paduano countered with a host of benefits she had received from Duterte, including her “tour of duty” in Davao and Cebu City and command of PNP’s investigation and detection group, CIDG, saying the public positions she held support the conclusion she had “close and special” relations with the president at the time.
Paduano wanted a “yes or no” answer, didn’t get it, and instead sensed they were “just running in circles,” thus the citation for contempt. Her eventual admission of “Perhaps, Mr. Chair, I am special” and outburst of tears didn’t hold off the contempt sanction. She was allowed though to have her daughter stay with her during detention.
The order of contempt apparently prompted the tears, induced also by questions that probed into her personal life, including an alleged sexual liaison with a married man, and her aborted flight with her daughter to the US after the cancellation of her visa on allegation she was linked to “Duterte’s death squad.”
FIRST WOMAN POLICE CHIEF NA, CONTROVERSIAL PA. Garma was Cebu City’s first woman police chief for one year — and a highly controversial one, not because of any problem from gender but for her public quarrel with then mayor Tomas Osmeña, which started after a failed ambush on Tomas’s ally, Tejero Barangay Councilor Jessielou Cadungog.
The bad blood between the city’s chief executive and its police chief showed in their exchange of criticisms laced with insults; in public display of boorishness, such as snubbing each other at the National Heroes Day function in August 2018, and in the mayor’s May 2019 demand for Garma’s transfer or removal from Cebu City because she allegedly connived with the then opposition Barug slate in threatening Osmeña’s BOPK leaders during the election season.
NOT LIMITED TO TRADING BARBS, the dispute between the two reached the legal forum after the 2019 elections. Aside from demanding Garma’s ouster, Tomas Osmeña filed on May 7 criminal and administrative complaints against Garma before the Visayas Ombudsman, including charges of graft and corruption, grave misconduct, gross neglect of duty and oppression.
Osmeña specified in his complaint “at least 12 incidents,” including unsolved killings and “irregular raids” by the police, allegedly to frighten his supporters and leaders. As mayor, Tomas had asked for a list of policemen involved in 12 police operations and the service warrant report. Garma refused the request, Osmeña said. A follow-up memorandum from the mayor, dated April 16, 2019, was also ignored by Garma but a reply from then OIC Colonel Lorenzo Batuan said Osmeña was usurping Comelec function as it was already election season.
The complaint wanted the police to account for alleged acts of harassment by the police against BOPK candidates. That and the side issue of Comelec powers in relation to the powers of the LGU chief executive were interesting questions of law that were not resolved even after the 2019 elections. Progress on the case has not been publicized since Tomas Osmeña lost in May 2019 and Garma left PNP to join PCSO two months later.
Garma left her Cebu City office only on July 11, 2019 after a one-year stint, and not without throwing a verbal punch at Tomas, then already an ex-mayor after losing the election to the Barug tandem of Edgar Labella and Mike Rama. “I feel sad for the Cebuanos who fall for (Osmeña’s) agenda,” she declared.
SUPPORT OF THE MAN IN MALACANANG. Garma refused, or was reluctant, to admit before the House Quad Committee her “close and special” relations with former President Duterte.
She was not so in October 2018 when she declared she was not “perturbed” by her long-running feud with Tomas Osmeña. She had “the support of the man in Malacanang,” Garma said with unconcealed enthusiasm and pride, and “the mayor’s hated but Duterte’s trusted.” (With SunStar reports)
