Senate probe on Binay is bound to self-destruct – Enrile

SENATE Minority Leader Juan Ponce Enrile criticized on Tuesday the long running investigation of the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee on corruption allegations against Vice President Jejomar Binay, saying it was “self-destructing.”

“An investigation like that is already losing its steam and value…I never had that experience. It’s unusual in any country for an investigation to last that long in aid of legislation so it destroys itself,” Enrile told reporters.

“We never had that precedent, and besides it started, if I recall reading from the papers, from a resolution supposedly in aid of legislation to determine the overpricing of a building in Makati but it expanded too far away from the resolution. Can you justify that?” he said.

Enrile and Binay are political allies. He ran for senator with Binay as Vice President in 2010 under UNA, now the political party of Binay in his 2016 presidential bid.

Enrile was then one of the “three kings” of UNA back when it was a political coalition in 2012 between Enrile and Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada’s Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) as well as Binay’s Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan.

Asked then why he thinks the Senate leadership was allowing the subcommittee to proceed with the investigation, Enrile said: “I said it’s self-destructing. Let them proceed because in the long term, they will become irrelevant.”

Enrile, who just returned to the Senate Monday from more than a year of hospital arrest in connection with the pork barrel scam, declined to say whether or not he would participate in the resumption of the hearing on Wednesday.

Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, who initiated the Senate probe against Binay, earlier said that a new anomaly will be exposed at the resumption of the hearing involving the alleged more than P1-billion worth of contracts a year in Makati City that were cornered by three companies allegedly owned by the Binays.

READ: Trillanes to expose 3 services firms allegedly owned by Binays

Trillanes said at least P400 million of the amount went to the Binays.

“I believe mga at least P400 million. At least ha, pero di ko pa nakikita gaano lahat…,” Trillanes said in a separate interview.

But the Binay camp played down the new expose against the Vice President.

“As in the past 24 hearings, we expect recycled allegations, dubious if not falsified documents, and outright lies in this longest-running farce they call a Senate inquiry,” Joey Salgado, head of the Office of the Vice President’s media, said in a text message.

“Baka nagkita na si Alden at Yaya Dub pero hindi pa tapos ang telenovela nila sa Senado,” Salgado added, referring to the latest popular tandem at a noontime television show.