‘Team PNoy has not launched demolition job vs UNA’

MANILA, Philippines - The Aquino administration has not launched a demolition campaign against the “three kings” of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), a Team PNoy spokesman said yesterday.

“If they see the administration and the ruling Liberal Party (LP) as the source of the latest adverse news reports against some UNA leaders, they are barking up the wrong tree. They only have themselves to blame,” Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone said.

He made the statement in response to UNA’s claim that the Commission on Audit (COA) report on irregularities in the use of tens of millions in pork barrel funds of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada and Sen. Ramon Revilla Jr. is part of a supposed smear campaign to bring down UNA and its senatorial candidates.

One leader of the opposition alliance described the release of the report as a “desperate act” on LP’s part.

Enrile and Estrada are among UNA’s leaders. Enrile, Vice President Jejomar Binay and former President Estrada are its “three kings.”

Evardone said the scandals hounding Binay’s alliance are “self-inflicted.”

“We have nothing to do with the findings of COA, which is an independent constitutional body. The irregularities auditors discovered involved funds allocated in 2009 and 2010, long before the campaign for the May 2013 elections started,” he said.

He noted the statement of COA chair Grace Pulido-Tan that there was no politics in their findings and that the release of their report was long overdue since the anomalies happened three years ago.

With the audit findings, Evardone said the Department of Budget and Management should further tighten guidelines on the release and use of pork barrel funds to prevent future wastage.

According to the COA, Enrile and Estrada had allocated more than P150 million in pork barrel funds to a non-existent private entity named Pangkabuhayan Foundation, Inc.

The two senators claimed they do not know the foundation and called for an investigation into how the funds they allocated to the Department of Agriculture ended up with Pangkabuhayan.

But auditors have discovered that it was Enrile’s and Estrada’s offices that nominated Pangkabuhayan as the ultimate beneficiary of their funds.

As for UNA senatorial candidate Nancy Binay’s appeal for her father’s critics not to hit him and her mother just to bring her down, Evardone said Nancy’s parents are facing cases before the Sandiganbayan.

Like the irregularities in the use of Enrile’s and Estrada’s funds, he said the cases against the Binays involved alleged acts of wrongdoing that happened several years ago, long before this year’s elections.

“The administration and Team PNoy have nothing to do with what they are facing before the anti-graft court,” he added.

He urged UNA not to inject politics where there is none.