Opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV on Tuesday taunted President Rodrigo Duterte after the latter disclosed that the government was investigating supposed irregular transactions of the senator’s parents as contractors for the Philippine Navy.
“I welcome Duterte’s statement on probing supposed transactions of my deceased father and my 84-year-old mother,” Trillanes said.
Wager
In a statement, the senator offered a wager to give himself up should the probe turn up anything illegal.
“In fact, I’ll raise the ante. If he finds anything [irregular], again, I would voluntarily walk into any detention facility, even in Davao,” Trillanes said.
The President said the government was “investigating quietly” the deals entered into by Trillanes’ parents as suppliers to the Navy, alleging there was conflict of interest considering Trillanes had also served in the Navy.
Trillanes was a former Navy junior officer who joined mutinies in 2003 and 2007 against then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
He was granted amnesty by Arroyo’s successor, Benigno Aquino III, but in August President Duterte revoked the amnesty, leading to the revival of a rebellion case against him.
Trillanes is out on a P200,000 bail.
The justice department is also trying to revive a coup d’état case against the senator.
Vindictiveness
Trillanes, the fiercest critic of the President in the Senate, mocked the President’s vindictiveness.
“But in the meantime,” he said, “why won’t he at least pretend to be angry and hunt down the drug lord who smuggled the P6.4-billion and P11-billion ‘shabu’ (crystal meth) shipments” into the Philippines through the Bureau of Customs?
“It’s becoming obvious that he is really behind those shabu shipments,” he said.
It wasn’t the first time the President accused Trillanes’ parents of wrongdoing.
In September, the President said Trillanes’ parents had irregular “transactions” with the Navy, drawing a denial from the senator, who lamented that his elderly mother, who was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, had been dragged into politics.