VACC NOT GIVING UP YET ON ARMY NAVY CLUB CASE

An anticrime group has maintained that its legal fight against the construction of a boutique hotel and gaming facility on the historic Army Navy Club in Manila was not yet over with the junking of its petition in the Court of Appeals.

The Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) said it had asked the appeals court to reverse its Feb. 28 ruling which denied its petition questioning the plan of Oceanville Hotel and Spa Corp. and Vanderwood Management Corp. to build a hotelcasino establishment on the landmark property owned by the Manila government.

VACC lawyer Rudolf Philip Jurado argued that the case it had filed against Oceanville, Vanderwood, the Manila City government, Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. and the National Historical Commission of the Philippines “has yet to attain finality.”

“The VACC shall exhaust all legal remedies to ensure that no casino gaming facility will be established within the historic Luneta Park complex,” Jurado said in a statement.

“[The] VACC is raising a constitutional issue that involves a matter of transcendental importance,” he said, adding that the group wanted to know if a “declared historical site like the Army Navy Club [could] be converted into a mere boutique hotel with casino and gaming facilities.”

According to him, the VACC will bring the issue “all the way to the Supreme Court to ensure the preservation and protection of the nation’s historical and cultural heritage.”

In junking its petition for certiorari, the appeals court’s 15th Division said the VACC violated the principle of the hierarchy of courts, pointing out that the group should have first filed the petition in the regional trial courts.

The court added that the case should be “considered closed and terminated” as it ruled that the questioned project was well within the city government’s exercise of its administrative function.