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Friday, March 29, 2024

Binay to Senate probers: Show what you’ve got

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VICE President Jejomar Binay on Sunday dared the Senate panel investigating him to come out with its committee report and tore into the senators for allowing a discredited whistleblower to testify at length without any evidence to support his allegations.

“The Senate should come up with the committee report already and let the public decide why the senators, who declared [their intention] to run for President, allowed a supposed whistleblower to testify even without a single [shred of] evidence to back up his allegation,” Binay said, referring to former Makati vice mayor Erenesto Mercado.

Binay also asked how Mercado was able to qualify for the government’s Witness Protection Program when all of the allegations he made were “bereft of truth.”

Binay’s spokesman, Rico Paolo Quicho, added that the senators accepted Mercado’s lies hook, line and sinker.

“The senators were in a hurry and recommended Mercado for the Witness Protection Program and the Department of Justice also immediately accepted Mercado even without verifying first his claims,” Quicho told radio dzBB in an interview.

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For this reason, Quicho said, Mercado was emboldened to lie to pin down the Binay’s.

In a separate interview with Bombo Radyo Friday, the vice president described the probe against him as a farce, citing Mercado’s failure to provide any concrete evidence that there were irregularities in the deal between the Boy Scouts of the Philippines and Alphaland.

The Vice President said he expects these attacks in the Senate to continue but said the public is now aware that Mercado and the other witnesses presented by the senators have been lying.

He added that all the senators wanted to do was to destroy his reputation by reaching those who were quick to believe their accusations.

“Their problem is that they have been shown to be liars, and it’s clear that this is all politically driven,” he said in Filipino.

The Vice President also said his son, Makati City Mayor Jejomar Erwin Binay Jr. is ready to face the consequences of his decision to stay away from the hearings of the Senate Blue Ribbon subcommittee which has threatened to jail him for contempt.

He also described the on-going proceedings as abnormal, since the rights of individuals are ignored and due process is not being observed.

Binay dismissed Mercado’s claim that he was only forced to sign the Alphaland agreement because Binay was unavailable at that time.

“If I was away from the office at the time, the longest period would be a week. The negotiations went on much longer than that, and Mercado was the only one dealing with Alphaland,” Binay said.

“He had the power of attorney. I didn’t talk to them.”

Binay said Alphaland has already denied Mercado’s allegations and even stated that it was Mercado who negotiated the deal between Alphaland and the BSP.

In an interview Sunday, Binay said his son would not budge in fighting for his principles despite the Senate threat to find him in contempt.

“You know, he is fighting for principle here. He remains firm on it,” the vice president said.

On Friday, Senate Blue Ribbon Committee chairman Teofisto Guingona III made a final call to Mayor Binay and the city officials to attend the subcommittee hearings on allegations of corruption or face arrest for contempt.

“I am issuing a final call on Mayor Junjun Binay and other concerned officials of Makati City to respect and heed the summons of the Senate Blue Ribbon subcommittee for them to appear at the hearings,” Guingona said.

“I make this final call as an effort on my part to avert a situation where the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee would have to issue an arrest order for Mayor Binay and other officials concerned,” he added.

Senator Aquilino Pimentel III, chairman of the Blue Ribbon subcommittee conducting the hearings, recommended last week that Binay, city administrator and chairman of the Makati Bids and Awards Committee Eleno Mendoza, University of Makati president Tomas Lopez, Eduviges Baloloy, former city administrator Marjorie de Veyra, engineer Line Dela Peña of Makati DPWH and Bernadette Portallano be cited in contempt.

Despite recommendation, Binay and the six other Makati City officials failed to appear in last Thursday’s hearing, the 13th in the case.

The Makati mayor attended only one hearing.

The other officials had showed up in several hearings, but later declined to appear after raising a jurisdictional challenge to the subcommittee.

Binay, Mendoza, Lopez, Baloloy, De Veyra, and Dela Peña said they were merely availing of remedies under the Senate rules, and were constrained to file a jurisdictional challenge because their right to due process, to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise, among others, were being violated.

Binay, Mendoza, Lopez and Baloloy also requested that they be provided with the list of questions that would be asked of them by the senators, a request that Pimentel has rejected.

Portollano, on the other hand, insisted she has no knowledge of the transactions which were the subject of the investigation as he was a mere nominee of Marguerite Lichnock, one of the alleged dummies of the vice president.

 

 

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