FILIPINOS yearning to see some semblance of “equality” between legislators and the citizens they investigate “in aid of legislation” should find consolation in a recent development in the Senate.
A spokesman of Vice President Jejomar C. Binay accused Sen. Antonio F. Trillanes IV of spending some P1.63 million a month on consultants that included his houseboy, family drivers, media workers, campaign donors, ex-mutineer friends, and his own brother whom he paid P71,200 a month. The spokesman is demanding that the Senate Committee on Ethics investigate the senator.
Trillanes is, of course, the Vice President’s high-profile tormentor, charging Binay of hidden wealth through plunder of the Treasury with overpriced buildings and services, among other crimes, while he was mayor of Makati City.
We are neutral on issues we perceive to be partisan and personal in character, but in the current instance we must confess to an elation in seeing a reversal of roles, the accuser being accused. All this time, it has been the senator who, using the lectern of the august Senate, has been cataloging to the world the Vice President’s alleged sins of commission. Now it is the senator being placed on the dock, to reply to charges that seem too solid to dismiss as mere political inventions.
In response, the senator is accusing the Vice President of authoring this “demolition job” against him. This is becoming ludicrous. Was it not the senator who earlier promised, in so many words, that by the time he was done “exposing” the Vice President, Binay would have lost all viability as a presidential candidate and would be obliged to withdraw?
Of the specific issues leveled against Trillanes, the one charging him of hiring two campaign donors is the most serious. Is the consultancy job given to these people, each said to have contributed something like P500,000 to the senator’s campaign kitty, a payback for their political donation? What is the consequence of this payback to the interest of the Filipino people? What is its impact, if any, on the senator’s intellectual and moral independence?
All this seems to make of us defenders of the Vice President. We are not. Long before the senator hurled his accusations, we have heard of the ugly rumors about kickbacks in Makati City. We have demanded, and continue to do so, that the Vice President show these rumors to be false before he goes about campaigning for the presidency. At the same time, however, we believe the senator must also reply to the charges leveled against him and not hide behind generalities. He owes this to the people.
Earlier, in this space, we called attention to the availability of the courts of justice to citizens for the redress of grievances inflicted on them by authorities and by anybody else. Of course, the Vice President is not an ordinary citizen and the Senate Committee on Ethics is not a court of justice. Furthermore, in politics, mudslinging and character assassination are par for the course. All the same, the scenario that is unfolding seems reassuring—David fighting back Goliath. Whether the pebble from his slingshot will hit its target, further developments will tell.