Manila: Violence broke out anew in Makati city after supporters of Mayor Erwin Binay locked themselves in at the city hall a day after he was suspended in connection with the anomalous construction of a school building.

At around 8am, the mayor’s supporters threw chairs at policemen serving an order issued by the Office of the Ombudsman suspending the city chief executive.

The suspension order, the second against the 37-year-old mayor this year, was issued by the Ombudsman or anti-graft prosecutor, for “grave misconduct, dishonesty and conduct prejudicial to the interest of the service” in connection with irregularities related to the construction of the P1.349 billion [Dh108 million] Makati City Science High School building.

The night before, an incidence of violence occurred as policemen tried to enforce the same order.

Some 200 riot policemen had been deployed as some 600 supporters of the mayor camped out in front of the city hall.

Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, in a statement, called on the mayor’s supporters to abide by the order of the Ombudsman.

Aside from Binay, 14 other individuals, all officers and employees of the city hall, were suspended.

“It is part of my mandate as interior secretary to enforce the Ombudsman’s orders because this is in accordance with the law,’ Roxas said.

“The personnel of the Department of Interior and Local Government were unable to enter the premises of the New City Hall as the roll-down gates of the building were locked from the inside,” said Roxas.

He added that at 9.30am, Vice-Mayor Romulo Pena took his oath as Acting City Mayor before Assistant City Prosecutor Julius Caesar Gaurano.

A similar incident occurred at the Makati City hall last January when Mayor Binay refused to accede to a suspension order of the Ombudsman in connection with the anomalous construction of another city government building, the city hall parking building.

The Ombudsman had earlier said that the P2.126 billion Makati City Hall Car Park was overpriced by P124.6 million.

The incident at the city hall is the latest development in the more than a year-long effort by the current administration to uproot the Binay family from their bastion of political support.

The family’s patriarch, Vice-President Jejomar Binay had been under mounting pressure from the government of President Benigno Aquino III, which is dominated by members of the ruling Liberal Party (LP).

The Binays — including Senator Nancy Binay and House member Abigail Binay — are being accused of entrenching themselves in the country’s key leadership positions ahead of the presidential elections in 2016. They are members of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA)

Vice-President Binay has earlier declared that he is running for the presidency under the UNA banner.

The influential Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) had called on the voters in the 2016 elections to “reject the notoriously corrupt” while warning at the same time to on guard against tactics by political “spin-doctors.”

“Reject the notoriously corrupt, but neither should one readily jump on the bandwagon of condemnation in the absence of incontrovertible evidence, for, these days, one’s reputation, so painstakingly built by sincerity and honesty over the years, can so easily be tarnished by the truly evil work of ‘spin-doctors’ in the payroll of one or the other political aspirant,” the CBCP said in a pastoral letter issued on Monday.