Ilocos group discrediting Chavit testimony tainted

A purported concerned citizens group named SISA (Save Ilocos Sur Alliance) came out with a press statement last June 16 that they will be attending the on-going trial of former President Joseph Estrada at the Sandiganbayan to demonstrate their opposition to former Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis "Chavit" Singson’s testimony against the jailed leader.

SISA president and spokesman Nestor Segismundo, however, was denounced by no less than his own wife, Sanny Pat Segismundo, who claims that her husband has been receiving financial recompense from the Estrada camp. Segismundo, in her apparent disgust over her husband’s actuations against Singson, said "it had always been because of money."

Sources disclosed that her husband himself indirectly admitted that his SISA group has been receiving monetary considerations for the "demolition job" they are doing on Singson. This was a reaction caught from Segismundo when in a recent interview over local radio, he was confronted with an information of fund transfers to his name.

Others in Ilocos Sur reacted to the news release, saying: They can believe that this "nuisance group of only a few from Ilocos Sur" will go to Manila to "attend the Estrada trial," because, "precisely, what they have been after from the very start is to catch the attention of people outside of their province." A common sentiment among Chavit’s provincemates is that "SISA’s avowals of corruption by Singson have always been for external consumption as hardly anyone listens to them in Ilocos Sur." Many say that SISA’s planned attendance to the Sandiganbayan hearing is to bolster their assignment from the Estrada camp – that of discrediting Chavit and his testimony, together with those of Emma Lim’s and Menchu Itchon’s, among those outside of Ilocos Sur who they (SISA) can possibly "hoodwink" into believing their "distorted versions" of Chavit’s testimony against Estrada.