Senate appearance doctors’ call—Ignacio Arroyo

Negros Occidental Rep. Ignacio “Iggy” Arroyo.

The doctors of Negros Occidental Representative Ignacio “Iggy” Arroyo hold the key to his appearance at the Senate blue ribbon committee inquiry into the helicopter scandal in which his elder brother is implicated.

In a telephone interview Friday with the Philippine Daily Inquirer in Bacolod City, Iggy Arroyo said he was confined in a hospital in London for a checkup on his liver and surgery to repair his hipbone. He said he first had hip surgery 12 years ago.

If his doctors allow him to fly home, he will show up at the inquiry, the lawmaker said.

But in a statement issued earlier Friday, Iggy Arroyo said he was in London and could not possibly answer questions from the senators who, he claimed, had an “agenda” in inviting him to the inquiry.

Through his lawyer, Iggy Arroyo had earlier claimed ownership of two secondhand helicopters sold at brand-new rates to the Philippine National Police in 2009. The choppers were owned by his elder brother, Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo, according to Archibald Po of Lionair Inc.

Tit for tat

Iggy Arroyo told the Inquirer that while he was willing to testify, there was such a thing as interparliamentary courtesy.

He said the same courtesy was also why the House had not called Senator Panfilo Lacson, Mike Arroyo’s accuser, to testify on using a fake passport while Lacson was in hiding abroad in connection with the Dacer-Corbito murder case.

“If [Lacson] has questions to ask me in the Senate, I also have a lot of questions to ask him in the House,” Iggy Arroyo said, adding that he would initiate an inquiry into Lacson’s stay abroad using fake travel documents.

“I will also ask the Department of Foreign Affairs why it issued Lacson a fake passport. And if it didn’t, he would have more explaining to do,” the congressman said.

Po had testified to selling a total of five choppers, the two included, to Mike Arroyo for use in the 2004 campaign of his wife, then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

But Iggy Arroyo claimed through his lawyer that the choppers were merely leased from Lionair in March 2004 by LTA Inc., the family corporation, of which he was then president and still in the private sector.

One of those choppers crashed in Sipalay City, Negros Occidental, the congressman said Friday.

Negros Occidental Board Member Emilio Yulo III said in a separate interview that the chopper with then President Arroyo on board was several feet in the air in Sipalay, 178.4 kilometers south of Bacolod City, when it dropped to the ground.

Arroyo, who was then campaigning, was not hurt, Yulo said.

Physically impossible

In the statement issued Friday, Iggy Arroyo said: “I will have to decline the invitation, not only because it is physically impossible for me to be present in the … hearing, as I am currently in London, but also, and more importantly, because there is a clear agenda that some senators have admitted, which can no longer be in pursuit of the legislative mandate of the committee to conduct proceedings in aid of legislation.”

Mike Arroyo himself had earlier begged off from attending the inquiry on account of a heart ailment. He had also denied owning the choppers.

Iggy Arroyo decried the purported bias of the senators who, he said, were quick to dismiss his earlier statement that the choppers were leased from Lionair.

“[N]ewspaper reports have quoted certain senators as saying that they do not believe my ‘claim’ that ‘Mike Arroyo was not the owner of the helicopters,’” he said.

He also said these senators were now questioning the authenticity of the lease agreement and acting “as lawyers” for Po, “the main proponent of the vicious lies seeking to implicate my brother.”

“By alleging certain assumed discrepancies in the lease agreement itself, the senators would attempt to make a judicial evaluation of [its] validity … which is unmistakably the prerogative and authority of our judicial courts. Even the demands of interparliamentary courtesy are being sought to be ignored and set aside, in pursuit of this very sad orchestrated agenda which can only be politically motivated,” Iggy Arroyo said.

‘Better that he attend’

Senators have rarely invited congressmen to their inquiries, and vice versa. While Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. had advised Iggy Arroyo to accept the invitation, most House members said this could set a precedent where each chamber would call on the other’s members to testify.

But in Malacañang’s estimation, Iggy Arroyo should attend the Senate blue ribbon committee’s inquiry.

“Without his testimony under oath, it would be unfair for him or the First Gentleman because the purported [seller] would have been the First Gentleman,” President Aquino’s spokesperson Edwin Lacierda told reporters Friday at a news briefing.

“It’s better for him to attend the Senate [inquiry], so that the senators can verify from him as to the nature, as to the status, as to the events that transpired in the purchase of the helicopters,” Lacierda said.

According to Lacierda, the Aquino administration is interested in what Iggy Arroyo has to say regarding LTA Inc.’s purported lease of the choppers.

“I think it would be good if the revelation put forth by Congressman Iggy Arroyo would be explained in detail,” he said. “Again, we are all for the truth, and he claims that they bought the helicopters, not FG. So we are interested to know what the situation was in this chopper transaction.”

‘Power not absolute’

But LTA Inc. lawyer Andresito Fornier pointed out that senators “are not prosecutors and judges.”

“They are august members of the Congress of the Philippines with the power to enact, amend and repeal laws, and the power to conduct inquiries in aid of legislation, which, however, is not absolute or unlimited,” he said in his own statement.

Fornier said the senators’ claim that the lease agreement was fake because of the notarization and manner of signing was “irrelevant and immaterial.”

He said that if Po was denying that the lease agreement existed and was voluntarily signed by Lionair officer Renato Sia, “then there is no point in harping on some irrelevant deficiencies in notarization.”

He added that “there seems to be an overfixation on notarization” in the Philippines, even if an agreement did not need it.

Fornier also wondered why Sia had remained quiet on the agreement which, he said, was “obvious[ly] prepared by Lionair based on its own template.” With reports from Gil C. Cabacungan Jr. and Norman Bordadora