Nacionalista Party presidential candidate Manuel Villar, Jr. said if he wins, the speaker of the House of Representatives will come from their party and not…
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Tag: manuel villar
Independent presidential candidate Ma. Ana Consuelo “Jamby” Madrigal said Tuesday she will leave the country if Nacionalista Party presidential candidate Manuel “Manny” Villar wins. “If…
This is another view on the C-5 controvery:
by Rene B. Azurin
BusinessWorld
More credibility, probably, would attach to the Senate committee report on its so-called “investigations” into the C-5 road project controversy if senators — most politicos, actually — were not widely perceived as being distinctly unshy, brazen even, about using their considerable power to influence government decisions on public works and procurement. That said, I would certainly give great weight to the C-5 allegations being leveled at Senator Villar if I were satisfied that they were true. I am not.
On an issue precisely of ethics, objective observers must wonder how senators — like presidential candidate Aquino’s Liberal Party partymate Mr. Pangilinan — can first affix their signatures to one resolution clearing Mr. Villar and then about-face 180 degrees to affix their signatures to another one censuring him, just because “it’s the party stand.” Well, that, at least, is an explicit admission of how “honorable” senators define ethics.
Although Mr. Villar has actually already made a point-by-point rebuttal in the Senate itself of the charges of “ethical misconduct” against him and has clearly taken pains to make available to the public — through media — documents supporting his answers to each allegation, he is, alas, simply not media’s darling. Thus, media outfits whose bias for his rivals is obvious to observers constantly detail the allegations against him in their stories on the controversy and formulaically just include his denials but not his specific answers to the allegations. Such is life in these politico- and elite-dominated islands.
(We still have to see the report but it looks like the senators concluded the issue was ethics, not graft.)
Click here for the report: http://www.senate.gov.ph/lisdata/1341811858!.pdf
By Christine Avendaño
Philippine Daily Inquirer
A draft report by the Senate committee of the whole is seeking the censure of Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. after finding him to have engaged in improper and unethical conduct in connection with the C-5 road extension project.
The report, which an official of a political party furnished the Philippine Daily Inquirer, said Villar’s involvement in the C-5 project in Parañaque and Las Piñas cities “made the Filipino suffer the total amount of P6.22 billion.”
The committee demanded the money’s return.
The money came from the realigned P4.28 billion for the extension project, the P1.8 billion spent for the original project but which was wasted due to the realignment, and the P141.1 million in overpriced right-of-way payments for Villar’s real estate companies.
The discussions in the previous post on this question of how the next president would handle Gloria Arroyo have been vibrant. However, I noticed that some quoted just a part of the answers which could be misleading.
For my column for Abante I got all the answers of the four presidential aspirants: Senators Manny Villar, Benigno Aquino III, Francis Escudero and Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro.
Although Che-Che Lazaro didn’t ask exactly the same questions to all the interviewees, more or less, you have an idea of their stand or lack of stand.
***
Ang isang bagay na gusto ng marami nating kababayan marinig sa mga kandidato para pangulo ay kung ano ang kanilang gagawin kay Gloria Arroyo kung sila ang maupo sa Malacañang.
by Tarra Quismundo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
A presidential aspirant, two military rebels elected senators and a jailed Army general hoping to follow suit: Could this foreshadow what is to come in 2010?
Known presidential hopeful Senator Manuel Villar, Senators Gregorio Honasan and Antonio Trillanes IV, and jailed Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim were seen in a rare gathering on Saturday, when they attended the wedding of Trillanes’ brother Jay.
And when someone joked they were together to hatch a plot as they posed together for pictures, Trillanes, the youngest of the group, answered with a smile: “May pinaplano para sa mabuti [We’re planning for something good].”
by Lito Banayo
Malaya
Speculations and spins always fly whenever something takes everyone by surprise. Thus did the Senate “coup” which replaced Manuel Villar as its president with 84-year old Juan Ponce Enrile come to most everyone.
One paper bannered an Erap hand in the coup, banking only on the supposed membership of Enrile in the latter’s party, and the perceived “closeness” of the two, which isn’t exactly true. They are friends, but they are not that close. Even when only the two of them survived the Cory juggernaut in the first elections under the 1987 Constitution that re-installed a two-chamber Congress, they were not that close. Estrada, who tries to be friendly with everybody, and forgives anyone and everyone at the drop of a tear, fake or feigned, knew the political value of the wise Ponce Enrile, so that even if the latter did not support his presidential run in 1998, he reached out. He needed the cooperation of the Senate, and so politically, he bedded even with other unlikely political “friends” as Miriam Defensor Santiago. That paper cited an “administration senator” as its source, but the guy, who can easily be identified by any political observer, was also just speculating.
Senator Panfilo Lacson told ANC after Juan Ponce-Enrile was sworn in as senate president after Manny Villar resigned, that “Nothing is spontaneous here in the Senate. These things are planned.”
To recall, Villar, who was re-elected as senator in 2007 under the Genuine Opposition ticket, was installed as senate president last July with a vote of 15-7 by what was described as a “mongrel” majority that included all of Malacañang allies. Given that kind of support base, Villar has been doing a delicate balancing act between Malacañang’s interest and the public’s expectation for the Senate to do a fiscalizing role to the Arroyo administration’s brazen violations of the Constitution.
Although initiated by four opposition senators – Lacson, Loren Legarda, Mar Roxas and Jamby Madrigal, Villar’s ouster last Monday was made possible when the very same people who were his allies just more than a year ago abandoned him.