For immorality, Gov’t employee suspended for 6 months

CEBU, Philippines - An employee of the Lapu-Lapu City Engineering’s Office was meted with six months suspension without pay after he was found guilty of immoral conduct.

The Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas has found Marcelo Ybanez, Jr. guilty of disgraceful and immoral conduct filed by his former live-in partner.

Ybanez engaged himself in two marriages with different women.

“Respondent’s intimate relationship with a woman other than his wife shows his moral indifference to the opinion of the good and respectable members of the community,” said graft investigator Corazon Carillo-Arnado.

The anti-graft office has directed Mayor Paz Radaza to implement the order and to submit compliance report before their office.

Ybanez’s former live-in partner, Aida Villarin, filed the complaint after the former left her and their two children for another woman.

Villarin said the respondent eloped with another woman sometime in 2010.

She learned that before her the respondent had contracted two marriages with different women. Villarin presented the certificates of marriage issued by the Office of the Civil Register and the National Statistics Office showing that Ybanez was married to Avelina Gorumba on November 20, 1971 and to Consolacion Muga on October 1, 1993.

Under the Philippine law contracting two marriages is prohibited unless the first marriage is annulled by the court.

Ybanez admitted before the anti-graft body to have contracted two marriages. However, he said that he was of the impression that his marriage to Gorumba had been dissolved after they have not communicated for almost 20 years.

Ybanez said he met Muga and married with her but separated later. — (FREEMAN)