‘Agri exec need not be meted suspension’

Provincial Administrator Mark Tolentino said he doesn’t see the need to place Provincial Agriculturist Roldan Saragena under preventive suspension while authorities investigate the intimate photos of him and a woman uploaded online.

Unlike the case of former Capitol Chief Security Loy Anthony Madrigal, Tolentino said the woman involved in the photos is not a provincial government employee.

Madrigal resigned last September even before the Capitol’s investigation committee started looking into his alleged affair with his married secretary.

Tolentino said a suspension prevents the subject of the complaint to influence the committee or other witnesses in the course of the investigation.

“If you ask me, I don’t see the need for a preventive suspension. No other official or employee involved so I don’t see why putting him in a suspension would serve its objective. I think it is also a private matter. This is an issue that Saragena has to take up privately,” Tolentino said.

Provincial Legal Officer Orvi Ortega, who heads the Committee on Discipline and Investigation (CODI), said they will take up the matter today.

Cebu Gov. Hilario Davide III ordered the investigation after the photos of Saragena and a woman who isn’t his wife spread in social media.

Saragena still declined to issue a statement. “I will just direct my answers to the CODI,” he said over the phone.