Senate caucus degenerates into face-off among senators over ‘pork’
Sen. Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada and Sen. Alan Cayetano INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines – The caucus at the Senate last Wednesday has allegedly degenerated into a face-off among senators over the “pork barrel” mess.
Several sources said Senator Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada castigated Senate Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano for challenging him to face the Senate investigation into the “pork barrel” scam and for repeatedly asking whistle-blower Benhur Luy to identify the “sexy” senator, who allegedly gave funds to dummy non-government organizations (NGOs) of Janet Lim-Napoles.
“Sinita ni Jinggoy si Alan is more accurate. Alan explained,” one source said in a text message on Thursday when asked if it were true that the two clashed during the closed-door meeting.
Last Monday, Cayetano dared Estrada and Senators Juan Ponce-Enrile and Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. to also face the Senate investigation into the “pork” scam after they reportedly backed moves to summon Napoles.
Estrada, Enrile and Revilla were all charged with plunder at the Office of the Ombudsman for allegedly funnelling their priority development assistance fund (PDAF) or “pork barrel” funds to Napoles’ NGOs.
The same source confirmed that Senator Antonio “Sonny” Trillanes IV also confronted Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero over the reported fund releases of additional P100 million each to six senators in 2011 through the controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program.
Trillanes was allegedly among the six along with Senators Alan Peter Cayetano, Ralph Recto, Teofisto Guingona III, Sergio Osmeña III and former Senator Francis Pangilinan .
Another source confirmed this, saying that Trillanes suspected that Escudero’s office was the source of the DAP documents that were used as the basis for the news article.
But Escudero allegedly denied this and even argued that there was nothing wrong if the information came out to the media.
Asked if it were true that he confronted Escudero over the DAP, Trillanes said in a text message: “It was not about the DAP.”
He did not reply though when asked again what it was about.
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