PATRICIO G. DUMLAO, PROVINCIAL GOVERNOR OF NUEVA VIZCAYA, PETITIONER, VS. HON. RAMON A. DIAZ, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, ANTONIO A. TORRES, ASSISTANT SOLICITOR GENERAL AND BELEN F. CA…

We dismiss the petition at bar challenging petitioner’s pre­ventive
suspension from office by the previous administration, by virtue of the issues
having become moot and academic.

Petitioner Patricio G. Dumlao, filed on
April 23, 1965, his petition for writs of prohibition and mandamus against res­pondent
public officials, questioning inter alia
the validity and legality of the letter of April 13, 1965 of respondent Ramon
A. Diaz, then Executive Secretary, transmitting the President’s order
suspending petitioner from his office as Provincial Gover­nor of Nueva Vizcaya and directing him
to turn over the office to respondent Belen F. Calderon, then Vice-Governor of
the prov­ince, as a result of administrative charges filed on March 19, 1964
against petitioner.  Asserting that
Article VII, Section 10(1) of the Philippine Constitution derogated the
President’s author­ity to suspend and remove provincial officials under Section
2078 of the Revised Administrative Code and that prescinding
therefrom, the order suspending petitioner from
office was without factual basis and constituted a “purely arbitrary and highly
oppressive act,” petitioner further sought the issuance of a writ of prelimi­nary
injunction enjoining the enforcement of the suspension order as well as
enjoining Assistant Solicitor General Antonio A. Torres, who was designated
Special Investigator by the Office of the Pres­ident, from continuing his
investigation of the administrative charges against petitioner.

The allegations of the petition were traversed in the
Solicitor-General’s Answer filed on April
28, 1965, and hearing on the prayer for preliminary injunction was
held on April 29, 1965.  On May 14, 1965, petitioner filed an urgent
motion for resolution of his petition for preliminary injunction, and if such
resolution might still be delayed, prayed for the issuance of a restraining
order enjoining the respondent Assistant Solicitor General from continuing with
the investigation of petitioner, as newly scheduled by said respondent for May
17 to May 20, 1965, until
the Court shall have resolved the petition for preliminary injunction.  The Court, in its Resolution of May 17, 1965, required the
Solicitor-General to comment on petitioner’s urgent motion within ten days and
issued in the meanwhile the restraining order prayed for.  Such comment was not filed by the Solicitor
General’s Office, despite several extensions granted for the purpose.

At the hearing of the case on the merits set on September 8, 1965, the parties were
given a period of ten days within which to submit simultaneously their
respective memoranda in lieu of oral argument. 
The last action that appears in the record is that both parties were
granted extensions up to September 28, 1965 within which to file their
respective memoranda, and that the period lapsed without such memoranda ever
having been filed.

It is obvious from the parties’ loss of interest that the pre­sent
petition became moot with the change of administration by virtue of the
November, 1965 national elections and the expiration of the four-year term of
office of petitioner as Provincial Gover­nor of Nueva
Vizcaya on the last day of December, 1967.  The Court takes judicial notice of the fact
that petitioner was reelected for another four-year term to the office of
Provincial Governor of Nueva Vizcaya
in the local elections held in November, 1967.

The principal issue raised in the case as to the application of
Section 2078 of the Revised Administrative Code has likewise become academic
with the enactment on September 12,
1967 of Republic Act 5185, known as the Decentralization Act of
1967.

WHEREFORE, the petition is hereby dismissed without
pronouncement as to costs.

Concepcion, C.J., Dizon,
Makalintal, Zaldivar,
Sanchez, Ruiz Castro, Fernando, and Capistrano,
JJ., concur.

Barredo, J., took no part.

Reyes, JBL, J., on official
leave.