Lawmaker slams Cayetano for dragging Binay daughter into controversy

MANILA, Philippines – Buhay party-list Rep. Lito Atienza yesterday criticized Senator Alan Peter Cayetano for dragging the daughter of Vice President Jejomar Binay into the controversy involving his alleged farming estate in Rosario, Batangas.

“Senator Cayetano is a proponent of the novel legal theory that if you just keep shoveling out more and more half-baked, circumstantial evidence, one after another, somehow the whole smelly heap would miraculously turn into a solid body of proof. This reasoning would not dignify a proper Senate hearing, let alone a court of law,” Atienza said in a statement.

Atienza attributed Cayetano’s lack of remorse over dragging the Vice President’s youngest daughter into this sordid affair to his lack of experience of being a parent.

Atienza said he hopes that the senator and his wife, Taguig City Mayor Lani Cayetano, will have their first child “so that he too will at last understand the happiness of parental love and, with it, the overpowering need of all parents to protect their children from all dangers, more so if those dangers are not just imagined but very real.”

Atienza issued the statement after Cayetano presented Instagram photos of Joanna Marie Binay showing her and the rest of the Binay family spending Christmas in the Batangas estate in 2012.

One photo was captioned “Our place in Batangas,” which Cayetano said is a proof that the Binays own the property.

Binay earlier criticized the Senate Blue Ribbon sub-committee for dragging his youngest daughter into the controversy.

“You know it saddens me that even my youngest daughter is being dragged into this campaign to destroy me. Can’t they spare my daughter from their persecution and mockery of me? I leave this up to the Lord,” Binay said in Filipino during an interview with Bombo Radyo-Naga.

“There is a place inside that property that is rented out by Agrifortuna and we can take our pictures there. I don’t think our pictures are evidence that we are the owner of the land. We were just invited,” the Vice President added.

Earlier, Binay named Atienza as among those who they consider as a possible senatorial candidate in 2016.

In an interview on Friday in Naga City, Binay also named Valenzuela Rep. Sherwin Gatchalian and re-electionist Sen. Vicente Sotto III.

The Vice President, however, said that he has yet to come up with his choice for running mate and did not name other possible senatorial candidates.