No bribery in Corona trial–Sotto

Sen. Vicente Sotto III: No bribery INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Sen. Vicente Sotto III has dismissed insinuations that the millions of pesos from the administration’s disbursement acceleration program (DAP) he received was a form of bribery to ensure the conviction of the impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012.

Sotto, the deputy minority leader and the chamber’s majority leader during the impeachment trial, said there was no bribery as far as he was concerned, contrary to the claim of Sen. Miriam Santiago.

“No one influenced me in my decision as regards the impeachment. Nothing and no one has ever influenced me in my legislative voting record. Check my negative votes against tremendous lobby on the GATT, sin tax, oil deregulation, Epira, etc.,” Sotto said.

Sotto also said he didn’t receive any DAP fund.

“My office was asked to submit infrastructure programs that I wanted funded for 2012, so my office forwarded some of the numerous requests that we receive from LGUs (local government units). There was no mention of DAP or PDAF or anything else,” Sotto said.

Sotto said that the requests were made “more than five months away.”

Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, who complained of being singled out for prosecution in the pork barrel scam, raised the issue of the DAP distributed to senators after Corona was impeached.—Norman Bordadora