Sen. Franklin Drilon’s schooling of Sen. Nancy Binay during the Senate blue ribbon committee’s investigation on the Iloilo International Convention Center controversy didn’t only reflect badly on her but her father, Vice President Jejomar Binay.
The vice president was in Cebu the other week to mingle with allies and press the flesh of supporters and court those who weren’t too preoccupied with his refusal to either attend a Senate blue ribbon committee hearing or a debate with Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV.
The senator and Drilon’s accuser, former provincial administrator Manuel Mejorada, came out empty in last week’s Senate hearing which begs the question of whether this shutout will result with Binay’s willingness to finally attend that Senate committee hearing.
Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) may overturn the Liberal Party’s (LP) accusation that the inquiry may be a diversion from the vice president’s current troubles by making the rather ridiculous claim that last week’s hearing was set up to favor the Senate president.
Unlikely though it may be, the pressure is now on Binay to show up or continue to languish beneath the landslide of corruption charges being leveled against him in the Senate hearings.
The latest batch of corruption charges now involve the construction costs of the Makati Science High School building in which each classroom allegedly cost P24.1 million to build.
Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano said they had barely crossed the halfway mark on the graft case they are building against Binay that even the Palace wondered when these hearings will end.
Cayetano said the Senate blue ribbon committee hearings on Binay may end in March or May next year which, coincidence or not, happens to be the halfway mark on the campaign season, when the lineup of candidates for national elections are more or less being formed.
Again we have to ask: Would those hearings keep public interest long enough for them to determine at least with finality Binay’s fitness for the presidency? For there is no shadow of a doubt that behind that tired line of “in aid of legislation”, the hearings undeniably carry political color.
But Binay is not helping his cause by ignoring the Senate blue ribbon committee hearing and instead cozying up to political allies like Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama, who has publicly defended the vice president from the allegations.
The public could certainly do without that Binay-Trillanes debate which would only devolve into a schoolyard fight of name-calling and verbal tit-for-tat despite being handled by the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP).
At any rate, the public will decide on Binay’s political fate come 2016.
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