Reina Mercedes, Isabela Vice Mayor Jeryll Harold Respicio on Wednesday (October 7) has been cleared by a P28,000 drug test at the St. Luke Medical Center in Quezon City.
After he got the results on Wednesday (October 7), the local official joked that Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla should now reimburse him.
‘Jonvic, refund me. The drug test is pricey,’ Respicio said after posting the results of the test for cocaine, ecstasy, opiates, methamphetamine, tricyclic antidepressants, terrahydrocannabinol, poproxyphen and benzodiazepenes.
A lawyer and an accountant, Respicio also posted the hospital invoice indicating his expenses.
The vice mayor had been controversial for a furious and expletive-laden exchange he had with barangay officials at a municipal council session on the use of tobacco excise tax shares.
This scene was recorded and posted online.
Remulla was quoted as saying, ‘I advised (Isabela Governor Rodolfo Albano III) to have the vice mayor undergo a drug test because his behavior looks like that of an addict.’
‘Is there any normal vice mayor who behaves like that? He seemed out of his mind. It was like he wasn’t himself,’ the secretary suspected.
‘Boss Jonvic, here are the results,’ Respicio said in his post.
Hours earlier, he tried to provoke Remulla into taking the drug test with him.
‘Secretary Jonvic, let us have a drug test… Accompany me to St. Lukes, now! Today! Let us see if Atty. Harold Respicio is using drugs,’ he posted.
He later announced in a live interview that the qualitative results of his drug test would be released within 15-minutes, and the quantitative results would take two hours.
Respicio said he will be willing to be penalized as long as the national government will also punish those alleged corrupt officials in his town, among others.
‘Let them punish me. But what I also want to happen is for them to punish those who are stealing from our town, and those who are taking advantage of the water, or the farmers,’ he later suggested.