UNA slams ‘arrogant’ De Lima for insisting on Binay probe

By: DJ Yap - 10 years ago

Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco: Lack of quorum threat. FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — Justice Secretary Leila De Lima had better stop dragging President Benigno Aquino III’s name in the National Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the Binay family’s wealth, the United Nationalist Alliance of Vice President Jejomar Binay said Friday.

UNA interim president and Navotas Representative Toby Tiangco said De Lima should not put Aquino on the spot by boasting that only the President or the Ombudsman could stop her investigation of the Binays and other personalities implicated in the ongoing inquiry of the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee.
He said De Lima appeared to suggest, by using the President’s name, that it was he who ordered her to pursue the investigation into the Binay family, and at the same time, not to pursue the ivestigation of administration allies linked to a number of controversial scams.
“She should stop name-dropping the President to cover up for her unlawful actions against the vice president. She’d better not involve him as he has enough problems on his plate,” Tiangco said in a statement.

“Now that she claims it is only the President and the Ombudsman who can stop her, the public conclusion is that the President stopped her from investigating [Budget Secretary Florencio] Abad’s role as the alleged mastermind in the PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund) scam as revealed by Janet Napoles,” he said.

Tiangco called on De Lima to make public a five-and-a-half-hour video recording of Napoles, a businesswoman at the center of the pork barrel scam, purportedly pointing to Abad as the true brains behind it.

He said De Lima’s actions ostensibly supported claims that Aquino also stopped her from investigating scams involving his key allies.

“The public cannot help but conclude that it was the President who ordered a stop to the investigation of the $30 million extort try involving MRT [(Metro Rail Transit) officials during the watch of Mar Roxas as transportation secretary, or the involvement of Liberal Party members in the PDAF scam,” Tiangco said.

Tiangco said UNA was “aghast at the arrogance of De Lima, and her seeming ignorance or lack of regard for the law.”

He described De Lima’s investigation as “a fishing expedition in aid of publicity,” and linked it to the secretary’s purported ambitions to run for the Senate in 2016.

“De Lima is probably thinking, why let the current senator-inquisitors [Alan Peter] Cayetano and [Antonio] Trillanes, who are milking the free media coverage to advance their political ambitions, have all the media mileage?” he said.

“We would have expected better behavior from any regular lawyer, let alone the secretary of justice. Is it really that important to her to get into Mar Roxas’ senatorial ticket in 2016?” Tiangco said.

In the same statement UNA interim secretary general JV Bautista described De Lima as “an over-eager political wanna-be bureaucrat with no jurisdiction to investigate the vice president.”

“Secretary De Lima belongs to the executive branch of government. The vice president, therefore, is her superior and she is not possessed with power or authority to order an investigation against her superior, in the same manner that she cannot order the investigation of the President,” Bautista said.

Bautista said the Department of Justice had no jurisdiction to conduct an investigation on any impeachable official.

“That power belongs exclusively to the Ombudsman. De Lima should read her Administrative Code and the Ombudsman Law to understand this very basic rule on exclusive jurisdiction,” he said. “Besides, why is she initiating the investigation motu proprio (on her own impulse)? There is no order or instruction from the President, nor is there any request from the Ombudsman. There is also no formal complaint before her office to give her any justification to initiate a criminal investigation.”