Aklan mayor ordered suspended for immoral conduct
Mayor Denny Refol of Altavas, Aklan, was ordered suspended for six months for immoral conduct after he was found to have fathered a child from another woman.
In a statement on Monday, Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales said she has ordered a six month suspension of Refol after he was found guilty of the administrative offense of disgraceful and immoral conduct.
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The Public Assistance and Corruption Prevention Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas conducted a fact-finding investigation on the case based on an anonymous tip and found out that Refol, who was married, had an affair with another woman with whom he has a child.
Refol also acknowledged paternity in the certificate of live birth of the child, who was born in 2007.
According to the National Bureau of Investigation in Western Visayas Regional Office, “the relationship gained public knowledge in the municipality because respondent publicly displayed the same.”
In his defense, Refol said that “at present, there are only a few public officials who have no mistresses.”
He also justified that the complaint should be moot and academic because he had stopped seeing the other woman.
But Ombudsman Morales said Refol’s administrative liability should push through because “the respondent has not denied the relationship despite the subsistence of his marriage or the fact that he has fathered a child with the woman.”
Disgraceful and immoral conduct is defined as an act which violates the basic norm of decency, morality and decorum, abhorred and condemned by the society and conduct which is willful, flagrant or shameless, and which shows a moral indifference to the opinions of the good and respectable members of the community.
The Ombudsman has directed the Department of the Interior and Local Government to implement the suspension order. CBB/rga
