President Benigno Aquino III and Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon. INQUIRER/INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTOS
Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon has some explaining to do.
President Benigno Aquino III has summoned Biazon to Malacañang for a discussion on the filing of graft charges against him in connection with the alleged funneling of his pork barrel allocation to a nongovernment organization (NGO) linked to detained scam suspect Janet Lim-Napoles.
“What the President said was that there would be a chance to talk [about the case], or he will [personally] talk with Commissioner Biazon about this,” Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma said in a radio interview yesterday.
Coloma did not say when the discussion would take place, but said that the President and Biazon would talk soon.
Coloma hinted that this “new development” might “change the context” of the President’s relationship with Biazon, who is a member of the ruling Liberal Party.
But Coloma was careful not to second guess the President over calls for Biazon to take a leave of absence after the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) charged him and 33 others with malversation, direct bribery and graft in the Office of the Ombudsman for alleged involvement in the P10-billion pork barrel scam.
The DOJ has not stated its position on whether or not Biazon should stay at his post.
“Justice Secretary (Leila) de Lima has told us that the complaint has been submitted for review and evaluation by the Ombudsman, and while this review and evaluation process is [going on], there is no legal compulsion [for] Commissioner Biazon to go on leave,” Coloma said.
But he added: “Delicadeza (propriety) is an individual decision.”
Biazon is one of two high-ranking Aquino administration officials charged in the second batch of 34 persons whom the government will prosecute for allegedly conniving with Napoles and other officials in siphoning funds from state coffers into Napoles’ bank accounts through nonexisting projects recommended by her bogus NGOs.
He is the first close ally of the President to be dragged into the widening investigation into the plundering of pork barrel funds between 2007 and 2009, which state investigators allege landed in senators’ and congressmen’s pockets through their connivance with Napoles.
Besides the customs chief, Zenaida Cruz-Ducut, the chair of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), was among those charged on Friday in the Office of the Ombudsman, along with Napoles and 26 others, including several former members of the House of Representatives.
Asked if Biazon still had Mr. Aquino’s trust, Coloma said the President had not expressed any other view since he singled out the Bureau of Customs (BOC) in his State of the Nation Address to Congress in July for corruption and inefficiency.
Biazon offered to quit at the time, but the President chose to retain him.
“But this [is a new development] so the old [context is no longer tenable]—perhaps there could be a change in the context,” Coloma said.
Asked if he was hinting at something, Coloma said: “We’re just expressing an objective reality. Because [in the matter of tenure] of anyone in the Cabinet and in the government who [happens to be] a presidential appointee, the applicable principle is ‘everyone serves at the pleasure of the President,’” he said.
Coloma explained that the “dynamics” in the government was such that an appointee’s employment was subject to the continuing trust of the President, on the one hand, and the willingness of the appointee to remain in office, on the other.
And by “context,” Coloma was referring to the President’s accommodation of Biazon in July and the implementation of reforms in the customs bureau.
“So that’s the context there. It didn’t take into consideration yet the most recent development that happened (Friday), when cases were filed (against Biazon),” he said.
He said the only thing remaining constant at this point was the President’s position that nobody is above the law.
“Let the evidence point the direction of the inquiry. There is no special treatment accorded to anyone,” Coloma said.
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