NAGA City mayor and former vice president Leni Robredo belied Saturday an online post claiming that she was in Metro Manila every week.
A Facebook account under the name Niko Perez claimed in a post that Robredo was secretly traveling to Manila weekly, when she should be in Naga.
”Why are you hiding your travels to Manila? She’s there every week,” read the post.
Robredo said she believes the poster is a troll and that the Facebook account is fake, probably being used by some politician as a handle.
”This troll started attacking me as soon as I decided to run for Mayor of Naga City. The name being used is an alias. One person used to manage the account before; someone else is handling it now. According to reports, a local politician is paying for it. It became very obvious who it was because when that politician had a different opponent, the troll shifted its attacks to that person instead. Now this account is back to targeting me because of our inspections of substandard public works,” Robredo said in Filipino.
The original post, published on Facebook on Wednesday, was later deleted, but a screengrab was sent to Robredo.
”I do not go to Manila every week. My schedule is usually once a month, and I typically travel on a Thursday or Friday so I can spend Saturday with my daughters, two of whom live here in Manila. I return to Naga on Sunday. This is easily verifiable because I post daily updates about my activities,” Robredo said.
”The reason I go to Manila once a month is to seek assistance from national government agencies and private partners. These efforts have already produced results. Naga has received more than P1 billion in assistance even before I completed my first year in office because of our persistence. We no longer need to borrow money, as was done in the past, just to build infrastructure projects,” she added.
Robredo said her travel expenses were paid with her personal money.
”Even when my trips are official, I have never charged my travel expenses to the City Government. This is easily verifiable. In fact, we are preparing a report in response to a request to disclose the travel expenses of all elected city officials. Even my trip to Agusan for the Palaro, despite the expensive airfare, was paid for out of my own pocket,” she said.
Sen. Francis Pangilinan, who ran alongside Robredo in the 2022 presidential elections, said the troll’s identity has been traced.
”To the person using the alias ‘Niko Perez’ and the people behind that account: stop spreading lies. We already know who you are,” he said.
He called on the National Bureau of Investigation and the Philippine National Police to track the perpetrators and charge them with violation of the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.
