Short answer. Its executive head — such as the mayor — or such other officer as the law or the court may direct. If the defendant were instead the Republic of the Philippines itself, service would go to the Solicitor General rather than to any local official at all.
What the law says
When the defendant is the Republic of the Philippines, service may be effected on the Solicitor General; in case of a province, city or municipality, or like public corporations, service may be effected on its executive head, or on such other officer or officers as the law or the court may direct.
Rule 14, Section 15 — Service upon public corporations. Read the full provision →
Two different rules for two different public defendants
This section carefully distinguishes between the national government as a defendant and local government units or similar public corporations as defendants, setting a genuinely different service point for each category rather than trying to apply one single uniform rule to every kind of public entity that might ever be sued. Knowing which category the defendant falls into is the very first question to answer before attempting service at all.
Serving the Republic of the Philippines
When the defendant named in the case is the Republic of the Philippines itself, service may be effected on the Solicitor General — the government office that represents the national government's own legal interests in litigation, making it the natural and designated point of contact for any process directed specifically at the Republic as a named party in a civil case.
Serving a province, city, or municipality
For a province, city, or municipality, or a like public corporation, service may instead be effected on its executive head — for a city government specifically, that would ordinarily be its mayor — or on such other officer or officers as the law or the court may separately direct in a given situation. This keeps service anchored to the official actually running that particular local government unit's ordinary day-to-day affairs. Service on someone outside that chain of authority, such as a rank-and-file employee with no designated role in receiving process, generally does not bind the local government unit, since the point of naming the executive head is to reach someone who can actually ensure the summons is acted upon.
The flexibility built into 'other officer'
The rule does not lock service exclusively and rigidly to the executive head alone in every single case. It also allows service on such other officer or officers as the law or the court may direct, giving genuine room for a different designated official to be the proper recipient where the applicable law or a specific court order names someone else entirely for that purpose, such as a legal officer designated by charter. A plaintiff unsure whether a particular office qualifies as such an 'other officer' should not simply guess; naming the wrong recipient risks a later challenge to whether the local government unit was validly brought under the court's jurisdiction at all.
Related provisions
- Rule 14, Section 15 — Service upon public corporations
- Rule 14, Section 14 — Service upon foreign private juridical entit[ies]
- Rule 14, Section 16 — Service upon defendant whose identity or whereabouts are unknown