De Vega chides Cato, ‘defender’

De Vega chides Cato, ‘defender’ | Daily Tribune

An official of the Department of Foreign Affairs yesterday reminded all foreign service officers that their being transferred from one post to another is “part of the nature of the job.”

DFA Undersecretary Eduardo De Vega issued the firm statement in reaction to a columnist’s piece that criticized the transfer of Elmer G. Cato from the Philippine Consulate in New York City to the Philippine Consulate in Milan, Italy.

“[It] is not a characteristic of a very professional public officer to go to the media or to ask allies to complain when they’re given a transfer from one first-class post to another,” De Vega said.

“Filipino community members around the world know that we, DFA officers, get regularly moved around. It is unusual and almost suspicious if they so adamantly insist on any particular one (post),” he said.

Likewise, De Vega noted that the so-called petition for foreign service officers has “long been used by less than professional DFA officers who refuse to follow routine transfers or recall orders.”

De Vega said that the DFA makes its own decisions on assigning or reassigning foreign service officers without being influenced by the media, and “all good soldiers should realize that.”

“If the practice were to retain somebody on the basis of a petition, then nobody would ever be recalled, as they would simply ask their friends from the community to sign petitions for them,” he said.

De Vega pointed out that such petitions could be a double-edged sword for the department, pointing out that the same logic could be used to recall someone from their post.

“It works both ways. The department cannot simply recall everybody who would be the subject of a complaint from the Filipino community,” he said.

Cato served as the Philippine Consul General in New York for more than a year before his transfer to Milan last year.

Some Filipinos in Milan had complained that Cato had sat on their complaints against Alpha Assistenza SRL last year. They said they and their friends and relatives in the Philippines had been scammed of at least 2,500 euros each (about P152,000) by Alpha Assistenza co-CEOs Krizelle Respicio and Frederick Dutaro.

Daily Tribune’s digital show Usapang OFW and a series of articles by the paper resulted in the Department of Migrant Workers, DFA and the Department of Justice taking up the cudgels for the Alpha scam “victims.”

In the online article, the columnist bemoaned Cato’s “questionable” transfer despite the “petition” of the Filipino community in New York to keep him at his post.

De Vega also clarified that the DFA, contrary to the columnist’s insinuation, did not contact DAILY TRIBUNE to write “disparaging reports” about Cato.

“We are not in the business of contacting newspapers to ask them to write these articles about our own,” the DFA official said, referring to the piece’s assertion of “intramurals” among influence groups within the DFA.

Cato had filed a cyber libel complaint against DAILY TRIBUNE and three of the complainants against Alpha Assistenza, claiming the paper did not contact him to get his side.

But documentary evidence of DAILY TRIBUNE consistently contacting and communicating with Cato, submitted to the Senate Migrant Workers Committee investigating the Alpha “scam,” would belie Cato’s claim.

The paper sought out Cato’s reaction to this story.