Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago on Thursday said she’d rather believe Sen. Jinggoy Estrada than his father’s former social secretary, Ruby Tuason.
Santiago made the remark two days after Estrada suggested in a privilege speech on Tuesday that Tuason also visited other senators in their Senate offices, but that Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, chair of the Senate blue ribbon committee, did not question her on this point.
Estrada on Wednesday told reporters that Tuason herself had told him that she had dealings with other senators, mostly on infrastructure projects.
Tuason testified last week that she delivered kickbacks from ghost projects engineered by Janet Lim-Napoles to Estrada’s office and to the aides of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile but that Enrile was unaware of this.
Santiago said the public was unaware of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) until Estrada spoke in September last year of “incentives” to senators who voted to convict then Chief Justice Renato Corona.
“We, the public, including myself, never knew the DAP disbursement until he rose and delivered his privilege speech, implying that the administration has been bribing members of Congress to shape their decisions during the impeachment trial,” Santiago said when reporters asked who she’d rather believe—Estrada or Tuason.
“So if he has knowledge that is not known to other people, perhaps we should grant him the benefit of the doubt,” Santiago said.
Tuason has admitted that she earned commissions while dealing pork barrel fund allocations of Estrada and Enrile’s to Napoles’ dubious nongovernment organizations. She said she knew no other senator other than Estrada and Enrile.
The two senators are under investigation in connection with an alleged P10-billion pork barrel scam, along with Tuason, who on Feb. 7 returned to the Philippines from the United States, where she fled after the scandal broke out.
“Ms. Tuason is one of the persons who applied for state witness so she can be expected to reveal all but only what she thinks will make the government approve her application to state witness—meaning she’ll be acquitted in the complaint sheet,” Santiago said.
“So, I would say I would tend to place my presumption on Senator Estrada,” she said.
Santiago said Estrada should name the other senators with whom Tuason had dealt in the alleged graft because his disclosure “places all of us under a cloud.”
“It is unfair to those who have not been implicated,” she said.
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