Pasig Mayor Vico Sotto
MANILA, Philippines — Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto flagged what he called as “edited” records supposedly showing that the city government has unliquidated cash advances amounting to P33 million.
This came after a certain “Anthony Torre” posted a supposed public record showing a disbursing officer of the city government with unliquidated cash advances amounting to over P33.7 million.
Torre advised Sotto to “come out with the truth”, pointing out that the city mayor has received awards in the past for his leadership.
Sotto, however, said the supposed documents posted by Torre were “edited”, saying that the certified record of the city accountant show that the unliquidated cash advances of the disbursing officer was only nearly P576,000 and not P33 million.
The city mayor attached the “certified” record in his Facebook post.
“Inedit ang dokumento, binura ang liquidations, tapos pinost. Sa madaling salita, kasinungalingan,” Sotto said.
(The document was edited and the liquidations were deleted, then posted. In other words, these are lies.)
Sotto then said that Torre’s actions reeked of “criminal offense” since the actions already involved editing of public records to accuse him of corruption.
“Saan kayo kumukuha ng lakas ng loob para gumawa at magkalat ng ganitong klaseng panloloko?” Sotto said.
(Where do you get the strength to do these kinds of lies?)
“Ilan taon niyo na akong sinisiraan pero di ko naman pinapatulan, dahil kilala ko naman kung sino at ano kayo… Pero yung ganitong klaseng kilusan, aba’y ibang usapan na to… Mukhang criminal offense ang nagawang pag-edit ng public records at paggamit nito para mang-akusa ng korapsyon,” he added.
(You have been tarnishing my name but I never reacted to them because I know who you are. But when it comes to these types of actions, it’s different. It seems that editing public records to accuse someone of corruption is a criminal offense.)
Sotto also said that there are no problems with cash advances—as long as they are treated as a last option and liquidated properly.
“Nung naupo ako (July 2019), may mga empleyado ang City Hall na milyun-milyon ang unliquidated cash advance, yung isa halos 100M. Pero siyempre hindi mo sinilip yun, di ba?” Sotto said.
(When I was elected in July 2019, there were employees of the city hall with millions of unliquidated cash advance, one of them had nearly P100 million. But of course, you did not check that, right?)
“Wala naman kasing problema sa cash advance basta’t last option at mai-liquidate ng maayos. Lalo na sa panahon ng pandemya, may mga bagay na pabigla-biglang nangyayari at mahirap iplano. Iilan lang din naman ang puwede maging Special Disbursing Officer para rito,” he added.
(There is no problem with cash advance for as long as it’s the last option and it’s liquidated properly. Especially at a time of pandemic, there are events that unexpectedly happen. We only have a few special disbursing officers for these.)
Campaign season?
In his post, Sotto advised Torre to just campaign for who he supports.
A screenshot of Torre’s profile included in Sotto’s post show that he is a supporter of former Pasig City mayor Bobby Eusebio who lost to Sotto in the 2019 elections.
“Salamat po sa pagbasa. Sana po ay nakapag bigay linaw ako sa katanungan mo. Ikampanya mo po ang gusto mo, pero panahon na siguro para bawas-bawasan natin ang pag-inom ng ampalaya juice,” Sotto said.
(Thank you for reading the post. I hope this provided some answers to your questions. Just campaign for whoever you want, but maybe it’s time to lessen your intake of ampalaya juice.)
“O baka naman na-hack ka lang din? (Or maybe you were hacked too?)” he added.
Eusebio earlier claimed that his Facebook account was hacked after his rants over the lack of Christmas decoration in the city went viral.