Former Customs chief Nicanor Faeldon talks to members of media at the Senate after filing an ethics complaint against Sen. Antonio Trillanes on Monday, Sept. 25, 2017. INQUIRER.NET / MAILA AGER
Former Customs chief Nicanor Faeldon is seeking either the suspension or expulsion of Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, whom he described as a “recidivist-bully” in a complaint he filed in the Senate on Monday.
Faeldon personally filed the 14-page complaint against Trillanes before the Senate ethics committee.
The former Customs chief has been detained at the office of the Senate Sergeant-At-Arms for his continued refusal to participate in the ongoing probe into the P6.4-billion shabu shipment from China.
“Senator Trillanes, sayang but you have to prove it to the ethics committee. Yung mga paninira mo because you can’t just blurt out lies to destroy people,” Faeldon said in a brief conference after the filing of the case.
“You should be more responsible, senator ka e. You’ve been there for more than… 10 years ka na ba dyan? You should be more careful. Idol pa naman kita,” he added.
In the complaint, Faeldon enumerated what he described as “vicious, calumnious and personal attacks” hurled at him by the senator, including the latter’s pronouncement that he was “at the heart” of the drugs scandal at the Bureau of Customs (BoC).
To this day, the complaint said, Trillanes has yet to produce “even a single affidavit, even a single witness, or even a single document” to substantiate his public and malicious imputations of serious crimes against Faeldon.
“By willfully spreading vicious lies, respondent Sen. Trillanes failed to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the land, specifically, complainant Faeldon’s right to be presumed innocent until the contrary is proved as enshrined in Article III of the Cosntitution,” Faeldon said in the complaint.
“Respondent Sen, Trillanes thus violated his oath of office, and therefore, he engaged in unethical and improper conduct,” he added.
Faeldon reiterated that allegations linking him to illegal drugs were “all lies.”
“Finally, complainant Faeldon is knocking on the individual and collective conscience/s of the members of this honorable committee, and of the Philippine Senate, as a whole, to do the right thing, and to stand up to the recidivist-bully named Senator Antonio F. Trillanes IV and others like him, just as the Court of Appeals did, just as the House of Representatives did, just as this same committee did and drive home the message, that: Mr Senator Trillanes, you are not above the law,” he further said in the complaint. /cbb