‘Mentally confused’ business incurs Santiago’s wrath
MANILA, Philippines – After Senator Miriam Defensor accepted his wife’s apology and withdrew a contempt motion that she was to have filed against him, a Chinese businessman refused to back down and said that he would pursue his ethics case against the senator, incurring her wrath for the second time today, Wednesday.
“May problema siguro yan sa utak [Maybe, he has a problem in his brain],” Santiago said of Chung Hing Wong a.k.a. Joseph Wong, who threatened to file an ethics case against Santiago for throwing him out of the Commission on Appointments hearing last May when he failed to present evidence against Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario whose nomination he had opposed.
“I will just have him deported because he is an undesirable alien. It’s very clear. He admits that he’s not a Filipino citizen. He has no personality at all. He’s not qualified to file an opposition in any CA hearings,” she told reporters on Wednesday after learning that Wong was still planning to file the ethics case against her.
Santiago called Wong “mentally confused”, saying that there could be a “medical problem involved here” and that “we should just drop this matter.”
“I don’t think the Senate media should take him seriously. The wife was begging for mercy and I went out of my way to bend the rules and now there’s this threat again? I think he really has a medical problem,” Santiago added.
Earlier on Wednesday, Santiago filed a motion to cite the businessman in contempt, saying, “You are a Chinese national. For that reason, you have no right to appear as oppositor in all these nomination hearings. You have no right to make a living out of the Philippine economy.”
“You have no right to appear on television and intimidate a senator of this republic because we’re merely doing our duty. How dare you do that?” she said, referring to Wong’s interview, where he stated his plan to file an ethics case against the senator supposedly for the incident last May.
Santiago then directed the Sergeant-at-Arms to send Wong out of the hearing room but before he could do that, Wong’s wife came to apologize for her husband.
“Who are you?” the senator asked.
“I’m the wife of Mr Joseph Wong. We’re very sorry for that that’s why I came here,” said the wife.
After hearing the apology, Santiago declared the case closed as she also withdrew her motion.
“This case is closed. There’s no more contempt order,” she had said.
