SAYS ENRILE
Ethics probe on Villar to continue
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:24:00 11/21/2008
Filed Under: Congress, Politics, State Budget & Taxes, Graft & Corruption
MANILA, Philippines—Not being one to “cover up the assess of anyone,” Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile on Thursday said the Senate will push on with an ethics complaint against his ousted predecessor, Sen. Manuel Villar Jr., over the controversial C5 road extension project.
He said Sen. Panfilo Lacson would be chairing the ethics committee that is handling the complaint.
It was Lacson who exposed the double appropriation for the P200-million road extension project in the 2008 national budget that Villar later admitted to have requested additional funding for, but denied any wrongdoing.
Sen. Jamby Madrigal filed the ethics complaint against Villar last October, accusing the then Senate President of conflict of interest, failure to divest interest and malicious, deliberate and fraudulent double insertions.
Madrigal claimed that Villar’s real estate empire benefited from the construction of the C5 road extension in Parañaque City.
Interviewed by dzMM radio, Enrile said the Senate will also continue with the inquiries pending before the chamber, including the “euro generals” controversy, the P728 alleged fertilizer fund scam and the C5 extension project.
“I am not going to cover up for anybody,” Enrile said.
He said the Villar case would continue because it has already been referred to the ethics committee.
“Enrile is not going to cover up the asses of anyone. If they are guilty, if they have committed any violation of the laws or violation of acceptable conduct as members of the Senate, they have to answer to the people and to the institution,” he said.
But he said Villar “will be given every opportunity to defend himself.”
Enrile said the ethics committee chairmanship was a job that no one in the chamber normally wanted but which Lacson has volunteered to lead.
Told that Lacson had implicated Villar in the C5 road extension project controversy, Enrile said: “To me, whoever will handle it will be guided by the rules of the Senate.”
Sen. Francis Pangilinan, who like Villar is now in the new minority, said Lacson should inhibit himself once his committee investigates the ethics complaint against Villar.
“Didn’t Sen. Lacson inhibit himself when he was a member of the Senate ethics committee? If he’s chair, he should all the more inhibit himself, to be consistent, unless he has a different stand now,” he said. Christine O. Avendaño
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