A municipal mayor from Batangas is facing an administrative complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman over four Facebook posts of her Christmas vacation in the United States in December last year to January this year.
In a complaint-affidavit, San Pascual Vice Mayor Antonio Dimayuga appealed to the Ombudsman to look into the supposed grave misconduct, gross ignorance of the law and violation of the Local Government Code.
As far as the accused—Mayor Roanna Conti—is concerned, she said: “I deny the allegations and find all the charges made by Mr. Antonio Dimayuga both amusing and baffling.”
Also included in the complaint was municipal human resources management officer Ronaldo Gonzalez Jr. for allegedly making it appear that Conti’s overseas travel had the proper authorization.
In a statement, Conti said Dimayuga seemed to be the only one who was “out of the loop,” adding the vice mayor was not aware of her authority to travel and leave the country as approved by Gov. Hermilando Mandanas.
She said the vice mayor was the one facing graft charges before the Ombudsman since he was “growing senile and wants to make a return as mayor.”
She said the administrative complaint was “totally baseless, and a waste of time and energy of our good prosecutors in the Ombudsman’s office.”
She threatened to file a perjury case against the vice mayor.
Dimayuga claimed members of the municipal council did not know Conti was in the US for a vacation with her husband, Nick, and their children from Dec. 20, 2018 to Jan. 5, 2019.
Attached to the complaint were FB posts with pictures of Conti spending Christmas and New Year in Las Vegas, Nevada and La Canada Flintridge, California.