Cayetano denies romantically linking Enrile, chief aide

Gigi Reyes and Senate president Juan Ponce Enrile. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Senate  Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano  on Friday  denied  romantically linking  Senate President  Juan  Ponce Enrile and his chief  of staff.

“I didn’t link him (Enrile) romantically or anything like that. It took a life on its own,”    Cayetano said during a press conference .

He made  this clarification just hours after  Reyes issued a statement, appealing to the public to spare her family and Enrile’ from the “hurt brought about by malicious insinuations and imputations regarding my personal relationship with the Senate President…”

“My family, especially my mother and my children, continue to suffer in silence at the horrible and distasteful comments they read and hear about me in the media and all over the Internet,” she said.

Asked then what he  meant when he said Wednesday that he  had a hundred “truths” about Enrile and Reyes for every lie that   the Senate leader would say  against him, Cayetano said, “I didn’t mean to them to be together.”

“I meant, ang dami kong alam sa kanya (Enrile). Ang dami ko’ng alam kay Atty. Reyes. Ang dami kong alam sa kanilang dalawa. So ang sinasabi ko lang sa kanila, hindi ko sila aatrasan pag issue sa issue (I meant, I know a lot about Enrile. I know a lot about Atty. Reyes. I know many things about the two. So what I was saying, I would not back off if we would be talking about issues),” he added.

Cayetano also noted that in his speech, he said that even  if he knows a lot about the two, he would “resist  the temptation.”

And while he said he was  “happy” with Reyes’ public apology to him in a statement issued  Friday,  Cayetano   lamented that Enrile  continued to  attack him and  even stood by the chief of staff’s  claim that  some senators are “hypocrites.”