Enrile, 22 senators face ethics raps

VACC head Dante Jimenez files an ethics complaint in the Senate against all senators for accepting cash gifts from Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile. INQUIRER.net/MATIKAS SANTOS

MANILA, Philippines – An ethics complaint was filed Monday against all senators who accepted additional maintenance funds from Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile.

The anti-crime group Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) headed by Dante

Jimenez filed the complaint before the Senate committee on ethics being chaired by Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano.

Critics described the additional maintenance funds from Enrile as “cash gifts.”

All the senators “have committed acts that affect their integrity and that of the Senate as an institution … by receiving and failing to return the [cash gifts] which were arbitrarily and illegally allocated and disbursed by [Enrile],” Jimenez said in the complaint.

Cayetano himself was included in the complaint along with three other colleagues— Senators Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Pia Cayetano and Antonio “Sonny’ Trillanes IV – who did not receive the P1.6 million additional maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) last December.

The four received only P600,000 each in November 2012,  the first tranche of the total P2.2 million supposedly allotted for each senator.

Another P250,000 additional “gift,” which Enrile sourced from the savings of his own office, was given to all 22 senators.

Only Santiago had returned the P250,000. Because of this, Jimenez said that they will ask her to be their witness so that she can be removed from the list of respondents.

Enrile was cited as the main respondent in the complaint filed before the Committee on Ethics and Privileges. Jimenez however said that all senators are included in the complaint.

Jimenez said the additional funds were “disguised as maintenance and other operating expenses which is unconscionable, immoral, and arbitrary.”

Enrile’s “prerogative, discretion, and authority is not without limit and boundary,” Jimenez said. “His wide latitude of discretion must be exercised with integrity, accountability, propriety and for public purposes.”

Jimenez also cited the unequal disbursement of funds to the four senators as “without any valid and legal basis.”

“This likewise shows grave abuse of discretion and exercise of authority on the part of the Senate President. His personal relationship cannot be valid and legal basis of distinction as to the amount of public funds to be allocated and disbursed to each and every Senator,” Jimenez said.

“Favoritism and bias in the allocation of funds undermine the principles of due process, democracy and equality enshrined in our Constitution,” he said.

The complaint included in its prayer that the cash gifts be returned by the senators so that it could be “returned to the Treasury of the Government for proper reallocation.”

“To erase or at least minimize the damage caused by this incident and in order to regain the faith of the people in our Senators … and out of delicadeza, the said cash gifts should be returned or refunded by the Senators,” Jimenez said in the complaint.