Comelec execs dispute Benipayo claim on foreign trips

Four commissioners of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) disputed yesterday the claims of their chairman, Alfredo Benipayo, that he alone has the authority to approve official trips abroad.

Comelec commissioners Rufino Javier, Ralph Lantion, Mehol Sadain and Luzviminda Tancangco earlier asked the poll body’s resident auditor to conduct a special audit on foreign trips made by Benipayo and two other officials for consultations on the Absentee Voting Bill.

They claimed the trips were made without the proper travel authority from the commission en banc.

Benipayo, however, argued that there was no need for him to secure said authority since it was the chairman who approves travel by commissioners of the poll body.

The four commissioners said they were amazed at how Benipayo, a former justice of the Court of Appeals and a court administrator of the Supreme Court, "could muddle the issue and miss the point of their complaint."

Trips that are approved by the chairman alone are local travels, which the en banc allows as a matter of policy, the commissioners said.

"The trips that are the subject matter of the letter to the auditor are all foreign trips, and the records of the Commission will show that all the foreign trips, taken by the chairman, are given travel authority by the en banc," the commissioners said in a statement.

They insisted that authority to go on foreign trips is granted by the en banc and not by the chairman alone.

"To insist that the chairman alone approves foreign trips is to reach the absurd conclusion that he approves his own foreign travels and hence can go in such trips at his whim and caprice," they said.

In his argument, Benipayo said that there was a formal invitation letter signed by no less than Sen. Edgardo Angara – for himself, Commissioner Florentino Tuason Jr. and one executive assistant, to join the consultation hearings.

The commissioner, however, said the letter was merely an invitation and could not, by any measure of interpretation, be regarded as an authority to travel. – Sandy Araneta