Ambassador to Greece Rigoberto Tiglao has e-mailed me a nasty reply

 

By Raissa Robles

Immediately after I had written about Bobi Tiglao, he e-mailed me his reasons why the Philippine Embassy website in Greece had not been updated at all.

He said:

Anyway, my side of the story and I really hope you correct your blog:

Our webmaster had blocked us out of the website, and refused to update it for several months already, and just allowed us to update it ONCE after I practically knelt down to beg them to update it for the Independence Day celebrations since our countrymen kept on asking us how to get photos of the celebrations.

The reason why they have blocked us out (and changed the passwords ) is that we have not been able to pay the webmaster for a year already, and my finance officer refused to sign the check for this, on grounds that he needed Manila’s authority to pay for it. Please contact my finance officer Mr. Leo Comaya ([email protected]) to confirm this.

Be as it may, I will tap my own small personal funds to pay our
webmaster so we could update our website.

He also said they had celebrated Independence Day on June 5, or days before the official proclamation of Noynoy Aquino as President:

Congress proclaimed NoyNoy June 9, and our celebration with fil
community was june 5. My staff also was focused on the Independence Day,
and as is the practice, govt cannot even refer to the new president
until he’s proclaimed.

However, something magical happened after Bobi Tiglao saw my piece on his website.

Overnight, he told the unpaid webmaster to update the website by paying him out of his personal funds.

I will not repeat here the nasty words that Tiglao wrote me. I will only point out three things to him:

First, this is my blog and I was not writing a news story. I indicate clearly when I’m writing a news story, just like those that Tiglao used to write for Far Eastern Economic Review.

Second, he faults me for not taking his side before uploading my blog entry. I believe in this case, the websites spoke for themselves. Tiglao said his webmaster had refused to update “for several months already and just allowed use to update it ONCE after I practically knelt down to beg them to update it for the Independence Day celebrations since our countrymen kep on asking us how to get photos of the celebration.”

And so I checked when Tiglao had last updated the embassy website. His several months was actually March 22 or under three months. Tiglao went out of his way to do a very, very extensive “staff written” update.

Here’s a sample portion below:

After Tiglao read what I had written, he was suddenly able to update the official embassy website:

 

Now I’d like to ask anyone at the DFA: was poor Bobi Tiglao paid for this update of the website?

Pls. e-mail me at [email protected]

I’d like to know.