Senate Blue Ribbon gives up on Binay

MANILA, Philippines - Vice President Jejomar Binay won’t get another chance to give his side on allegations made against him before the Senate Blue Ribbon subcommittee.

Senate Blue Ribbon committee chairman Teofisto Guingona III said that he would no longer invite Binay   to another hearing after he snubbed the special hearing set for him last Thursday.

“That was the first and the last,” he said. “I have already adjourned (the hearing). From here on, the subcommittee will go on.”

Binay refused several times to acknowledge the Blue Ribbon subcommittee’s invitation.

In various statements issued earlier, Binay said he has no intention of attending the Blue Ribbon subcommittee hearings because its members have prejudged him as guilty, and that the entire exercise is politically motivated.

Later, his camp said Binay would attend the hearings only if the Blue Ribbon committee, not the subcommittee, issues the invitation. 

Responding, Guingona set a hearing of the Blue Ribbon committee just for Binay last Thursday.

When Binay chose to skip that as well, Guingona closed the door on him permanently.

‘No you don’t’

It was an easy decision for Senators Antonio Trillanes IV and Alan Peter Cayetano to stop Binay’s two representatives from reading a prepared statement for their principal in last Thursday’s Blue Ribbon committee hearing.

The two senators said they did not want a repeat of the incident when lawyer JV Bautista and Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco gate-crashed an earlier Blue Ribbon subcommittee hearing into the allegedly overpriced Makati City Hall annex building.

Cayetano said the two should count themselves lucky that they were not allowed to push through with their plan to take the place of Binay at the hearing.

They would most likely have been held in direct contempt and possibly detained for coming out with allegedly false statements in an earlier hearing, he added.

Bautista and Tiangco said they wanted to present documents showing that former Makati vice mayor Ernesto Mercado was confined at the University of the East Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center in Manila, contrary to his claims that he was never hospitalized.

Binay’s camp raised the issue because Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II allegedly visited Mercado when he was supposedly hospitalized.

Denying the allegation, Mercado said if Binay’s camp could prove that he had been hospitalized, he would allow his testimony at the Senate to be stricken off the record and be declared a liar.

At last Thursday’s hearing, UERMMC director Maribeth delos Santos told the subcommittee that the documents presented by Tiangco and Bautista were not authentic.

Cayetano said the two representatives of Binay are willing to go that far. “Why is it that the Vice President did not even reprimand his spokesmen for producing a fake medical certificate,” he said.

“The Vice President should be thankful that we did not allow Bautista (to read his statement) or he would have been held in contempt.”

Cayetano said it would not have served any purpose for the two to speak before the committee when they only intended to disrupt the proceedings.

“They have been saying that these hearings were like a circus but they are the ones who insist on sending clowns to make fun of the hearing,” he said. “We won’t allow this to happen.” 

Trillanes said Bautista has been very disrespectful of the Senate Blue Ribbon committee, and that he would not allow him to speak in any of the hearings.

“The first time he was allowed to speak, he did not observe the proper decorum,” he said.

“So he won’t be allowed to do that again. He was disrespectful. If he just wanted to read the statement, then he could just do that outside to his heart’s content.”