De Lima on Estrada: Half-truths or half-lies

By: Christine O. Avendaño - 11 years ago

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Justice Secretary Leila de Lima on Thursday accused Sen. Jinggoy Estrada of engaging in “half-truths or half-lies” in an attempt to discredit whistle-blowers Ruby Tuason and Dennis Cunanan in the alleged P10-billion pork barrel scandal.

A day after Estrada delivered a privilege speech blasting the Department of Justice (DOJ) for mounting a demolition job against him and Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Ramon Revilla Jr., De Lima dared the senator to name his supposed “unimpeachable sources” in making the accusation.

De Lima dismissed as “absolutely not true” Estrada’s claim that a DOJ undersecretary had instructed Cunanan and Tuason to nail him down, along with Enrile and Revilla.

She said Estrada could be alluding to Justice Undersecretary Jose Justiniano, who is in charge of the pork barrel inquiry.

Asked about this, Estrada said, “Why will I reveal my source?”

“Let’s hide him under the name of Usec Daniel Smith,” he said, referring to a US Marine officer accused of raping a Filipino woman. The officer was acquitted by the Court of Appeals in 2009.

“We don’t coach our witnesses. And it’s not true we recruit our witnesses. They are the ones who approach us, it’s not the other way around,” De Lima told reporters.

Estrada, Enrile and Revilla are among 38 people under investigation by the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with allegations that allocations from the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) had been diverted to ghost projects and kickbacks in a racket engineered by businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles. They have denied wrongdoing.

Cunanan, 42, the head of the microfinance agency Technology Resource Center, and Tuason, 62, a former Malacañang social secretary and Napoles’ runner, are among those charged, along with the businesswoman. De Lima has provisionally approved the application of the two to become state witnesses.

Cunanan has said he was pressured by Estrada and Revilla to course their PDAF allocations to Napoles’ nongovernment organizations. Tuason has testified that she personally handed millions in kickbacks to Estrada in his office and his residence and to Enrile’s top aide, Gigi Reyes.

DOJ screens witnesses

The DOJ “vets” witnesses, De Lima said. She said focus was on the “credibility of their story and what they are saying” rather than their character.

De Lima also shrugged off Estrada’s bid to question Tuason’s credibility by showing during his privilege speech on Wednesday closed-circuit television footage of Tuason purportedly in the Senate premises but without the duffel bag said to contain money she delivered to him and Reyes.

De Lima said the video that Estrada produced was incomplete. She pointed out that Estrada himself had said that the tapes taken when Tuason visited the Senate were no longer available.

Estrada also mentioned that Tuason did not bring with her a duffel bag, De Lima said. She noted that Tuason had mentioned she brought a duffel bag only once and that her handbag could carry as much as P1 million.

“So, it’s non sequitur, meaning it does not follow that just because there were a few footage in the CCTV that there was no duffel bag,” De Lima said. “It does not mean that Ms. Tuason is lying.”

Estrada is “muddling factual issues,” she said. “That’s also distorting the truth and that’s also engaging in half-truths or half-lies.”

More attacks expected

De Lima said she met with Cunanan following his testimony at the Senate blue ribbon committee hearing on Tuesday. There, Benhur Luy, the principal whistle-blower in the pork barrel scam, testified that he saw Cunanan leave Napoles’ office with a bag that Luy said he had stuffed with P960,000, purportedly intended as a “commission.”

De Lima did not give details of her meeting with Cunanan. She also said there had been no final decision on his application to become a state witness.

In a statement on Thursday, De Lima addressed Estrada’s claim that he was a victim of a government “trial by publicity” mounted by “stray cats” that the DOJ had picked up as witnesses.

She said Estrada just “did not get it” and was “barking up the wrong tree.”

“Much of the publicity generated by the [PDAF] scam investigations, in general, and the testimony of the witnesses, in particular, is not brought about by the DOJ but the very nature of the subject matter,” De Lima said.

She said the government had been forthcoming and had not resorted to putting up a “stonewall of silence.” She lamented that the three senators had boycotted the Senate hearings.

“With the presentation of the witnesses in the Senate public hearings, the DOJ is left with no choice but to protect the witnesses from further harassment, including that coming from the political personalities most implicated in the testimonies of the whistle-blowers,” De Lima said.

She said she expected “more attacks from the senators implicated.”—With a report from TJ A. Burgonio