New charges dismissed as ‘ghost accusations’

The political party of Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte said the city had no ghost employees, calling Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV’s claims “ghost accusations.”

“This is an old issue that Mayor Duterte has already explained as without any basis. The city government hired various employees and assigned them to different agencies for a certain period of time,” PDP-Laban spokesperson Paola Alvarez said in a statement.

The employees whom Trillanes described as fictitious in the graft complaint he filed against Duterte in the Office of the Ombudsman yesterday were contractual employees the city government accommodated to give them temporary employment, said Alvarez, a lawyer.

Trillanes said the basis for his complaint was a 2015 Commission on Audit (COA) report questioning the Davao City government’s hiring of 11,000 contractual employees without a written policy.

Duterte’s lawyer Salvador Panelo said that if the allegations were true, a case should have been filed by the COA against the mayor.

Good governance

The camp of Duterte also wondered why Davao City was conferred a good governance award by no less than then Interior Secretary Mar Roxas in 2015 if the local government had ghost employees.

“Roxas awarded the city government the Seal of Good Governance in 2015. This means the local government unit [under]went evaluation,” Peter Laviña said in a text message to the Inquirer.

“That award is a positive affirmation compared with trumped-up charges,” Laviña said.

In August 2015, roughly three months before Duterte formally announced his presidential run, the Department of the Interior and Local Government awarded the city with the Seal of Local Governance.

It means the city passed the evaluation of core areas of performance in good financial housekeeping, social protection and disaster preparedness, and essential areas like business friendliness and environmental management.

“Trillanes only wants fancy attention,” Laviña said noting the charge only “tickles the media” but not the people.

Publicity hound

Alvarez called Trillanes a congenital liar and a publicity hound.

“If the Commission on Audit found the hiring of contractual employees irregular, then it would have already filed a case against Duterte. But there’s none. So what is Trillanes talking about?” said the PDP-Laban spokesperson.

She turned the tables on Trillanes and brought up his “overpriced” consultants.

“Why is it that your driver and household help are on the list of your Senate consultants?” she asked.

Alvarez said among the senators, Trillanes spent the biggest Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), or pork barrel, even when he was in jail for launching two failed coups. [The Supreme Court declared the PDAF unconstitutional in November 2013.]

“He should explain who are the ghost recipients of pork barrel funds,” she added.

“It appears that Senator Trillanes now only wants to throw allegations left and right so he will still be in the public eye since he is the perennial cellar-dweller in all surveys,” said the PDP-Laban spokesperson.

RELATED VIDEOS