Congressman is a deadbeat dad: teen

The estranged Canadian-based daughter of a Filipino congressman has accused her father of being a deadbeat dad in an open letter posted on Facebook.

The open letter of Gabie Gasataya addressed to her father, Bacolod City Representative Greg Gasataya, went viral over the weekend after she posted it on her Facebook account earlier this month.

Gabie, 18, who is based in Ontario, Canada with her mother Odette Montelibano, the congressman’s former wife, disclosed that her biological father failed to continue his promised child support.

In her post, Gabie told her father “in my last seven years here in Canada, I haven’t received a single phone call from you… not one Christmas card nor a birthday card.”

“But where our father-daughter relationship stops, your legal responsibility does not. As a member of the…Philippine Congress, I know you have full understanding of family law. But even with that understanding, you have clearly and deliberately abandoned your obligation to me by not providing child support,” she added.

Gabie said she is asking for child support because she is “going to university this fall.”

“My program will cost me $50,000 by the end of four to five years which has to be paid starting six months after graduation. I was hoping to be spared of the huge debt – even to minimize it with help from the congressman – my ‘dad’ who has been champion of education in Bacolod,” she added.

The teen also told her father, “You became every poor student’s champion, except mine, your own daughter. You are sending your stepdaughter to one of the most expensive universities in the Philippines – and yet you have abandoned me.”

Gabie said that before her 18th birthday earlier this year, she told her mother she will ask her father again for child support because she considers it as her right as the lawmaker’s biological child.

She added that her mother asked a lawyer in Bacolod to represent her and an undertaking was drafted for Gasataya’s signature.

“The undertaking stated that you swear to pay a monthly child support until I finish university. But you never signed the undertaking. On April, 2016, the child support that you started sending on January 2016 stopped. Similar to what you’ve done in 2013, you cut me off without any explanation,” the teener said.

Her original post dated July 5 has been shared more than 300 times. She also asked friends of her mother to share the post.

Many of the netizens’ expressed support to Gabie, who also furnished a copy of her letter to President Rodrigo Duterte, and to both local and national media entities.

“As a member of the newly installed Philippine Congress, I know you have full understanding of family law. But even with that understanding, you have clearly and deliberately abandoned your obligation to me by not providing child support,” she wrote.

She said it is an irony that the congressman's campaign slogan for the May polls was that he champions education for the poor.

“And here I am, your own flesh and blood, and you intentionally cut me off. You became every poor student's champion, except mine, your own daughter. You are sending your step-daughter to one of the most expensive universities in the Philippines -- and yet you have abandoned me,” the 18-year-old said.

“Once again I became a victim of your schemes. Your political friends were worried that your name will be tainted and your transition from the city government to congress will be a rough one with a child support case on your head so you stopped me from pursuing the case with another false promise… another lie. Should I have expected anything less from you?” she asked.

“I want you to know how I feel. I am dismayed. When before I felt robbed of a relationship with you, now I feel disgust at what a politician you have become. I want the people you serve to know who you really are,” she said.

‘This here, is my payment and my closure – to expose you for who you really are,” she ended.

Bayatan, counsel of Gastaya, said "The tenor of the letter seems ironic and loaded with contradictions.”

He said while the daughter completely denounces the congressman as her father, she purports that she needs support from the man with whom she had her blood in her veins.

“We can better understand such statement of a daughter with tender mind that she honors her father Cong. Greg Gasataya in as much as her father honors her. We do not believe that daughter Gabie would have thought to also denounce the Fourth Commandment to honor one's father,” Bayatan said

He said Gabie is the daughter of the congressman from a first marriage that was long declared by the court as null and void, allowing him to remarry.

"That while daughter Gabie belongs to the voided marriage, she, however, is still, by law, considered as the legitimate child of Cong. Greg Gasataya and his former spouse. Being so, Cong. Greg Gasataya has been tendering support to daughter Gabie conscious of his obligation as father and as a matter of consequence of the court decision in nullifying the first marriage,” he claimed.

This matter of support is, however, a joint obligation together with his former spouse. It would be unfair to misinterpret that this obligation of support is exclusively the congressman's responsibility, Bayatan said.

“While Cong. Greg is earning peso here in the Philippines it cannot necessarily meet the high demand of the necessities of Gabie in the USA (she lives in Canada),” Bayatan said.