Senate rejects Napoles’ request to postpone testimony at Senate

By: Norman Bordadora - 11 years ago

Janet Lim-Napoles. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The Senate blue ribbon committee on Tuesday rejected a bid by Janet Lim-Napoles to delay her much-anticipated testimony on the P10-billion scam she allegedly engineered to divert congressional pork barrel funds meant for poor farmers into massive kickbacks.

The 49-year-old businesswoman said she still had to hire a lawyer to assist her in her Senate appearance.

“As a person criminally charged, my rights include having a lawyer who will guarantee and protect these rights,” Napoles said in her letter written in Filipino sent at 8:37 a.m. to Senate President Franklin Drilon and Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, the committee chair.

“I don’t have any intention of going against the order of the Senate for me to appear even though in my personal belief, my presence won’t do the inquiry any good,” said Napoles.

“We regret to inform you that your request is denied,” Rodolfo Noel Quimbo, the director general of the blue ribbon oversight office management, said in a letter hours later to Napoles on behalf of Guingona. He said the hearing would be held as scheduled on Thursday.

Quimbo said arrangements had been made with the Public Attorney’s Office to provide Napoles with its lawyers, who usually handled cases of pauper litigants.

Napoles is being held in a police antiterrorist camp in Sta. Rosa City, Laguna province, on serious illegal detention charges purportedly for holding captive for three months a witness, her former employee Benhur Luy, against her alleged racket.

The businesswoman, Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr. and 34 others are facing investigation in the Office of the Ombudsman for plunder for allegedly channeling into ghost projects and kickbacks allocations under the congressional Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).

Earlier, Guingona thumbed down Sen. Sergio Osmeña’s request for a postponement of the Napoles hearing because many senators, who are on a three-week recess, would be unable to attend it. Apparently, he did not give in to Napoles’ request, because he had denied Osmeña’s.

Alfredo Villamor, a longtime lawyer of Napoles, said he would not accompany her during the Senate hearing. He said he had turned down Napoles’ request to handle her plunder case. “She understood my reasons,” he said without elaborating. He pointed out that he was handling only the kidnapping case in a Makati City Regional Trial Court.

“I am not aware of Napoles’ new lawyers and I am not privy to their plans about the plunder case and her appearance in the Senate,” Villamor told the Inquirer.

Napoles’ high-profile lawyer, Lorna Kapunan, last week resigned as the businesswoman’s counsel, citing differences in legal strategy with Villamor.

Guingona had long sought the appearance of Napoles in his panel’s inquiry, but Drilon had delayed it, at first seeking the opinion of Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales, but relenting after a show of indignation from some panel members.

‘Napoles has resources’

Drilon’s photograph with Napoles during a party has gone viral on social media websites. He also has acknowledged that Rene Villa, chair of the Local Waterworks Utilities Administration (LWUA), was his political protégé. Villa was a longtime lawyer for Napoles before his appointment to the LWUA by President Aquino in January.

“I call on Ms. Napoles to stop employing delaying tactics and to cease from making a fool out of the Filipino people,” Senate Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano said.

Napoles has all the resources and a legal team that “had been preparing and studying her defense,” he told reporters.

“Let me remind Ms. Napoles that the right to counsel, which she so vigorously invoked in her request, is not absolute under the law and her right to a counsel of her own choosing is limited,” Cayetano said.

Presidential Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma, asked about Napoles’ latest move, told reporters that the businesswoman should have no fear.

“Our concept is a lady justice that has a blindfold—it fears no one, favors no one. The evidence … will make those involved accountable,” said Coloma at a news briefing. “One who is truly not guilty will be certainly adjudged innocent; one who is truly guilty will surely not be adjudged innocent.”

In response to the public’s clamor for the prosecution of the people involved in the anomaly, Coloma said the administration was “actively focusing on the prosecution aspect” of the plunder and other graft cases.

Witnesses to cooperate

Levito Baligod, counsel of Luy and nine other whistle-blowers, said his clients were prepared to cooperate with Napoles.

“But if she tells lies, we are also prepared to counter her claims,” Baligod told reporters at the Department of Justice, where he met with Justice Secretary Leila de Lima.

The Philippine National Police on Tuesday said at a news briefing it would spend about P150,000 to take Napoles to the Senate.

Senior Supt. Reuben Theodore Sindac, PNP spokesperson, said much of the budget would be used for the gasoline consumption and other operational expenses of the police convoy. He said at least 100 members of the Special Action Force and other police units would be assigned to accompany and secure Napoles from her bungalow cell at Fort Sto. Domingo.

“Our security preparations are all set. The PNP units tasked to provide security have met with their counterparts in the Senate to lay out plans,” he said.

Napoles surrendered to President Aquino on Aug. 28, two weeks after she went into hiding after a Makati court issued a warrant for her arrest. Aquino accompanied her to the PNP headquarters at Camp Crame after she said she feared for her life.—With reports from Christine O. Avendaño, Michael Lim Ubac and Marlon Ramos