Colleagues to pass judgment on ethically challenged Villar

By Angie N. Rosales
10/19/2009


The ethically challenged Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. had until Friday, Oct. 16, to refute the charges that he had a hand in the questionable double budget insertion for the C-5 road extension project but he simply chose to let the deadline lapse without sending a word to his peers about his intention to rebut those accusations or present counter-evidence.

“It means, the case is deemed submitted for resolution. We will now buckle down to work on the report,” Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, who also acts as chairman of the Senate committee of the whole, said in a radio interview over the weekend.

Put in another way, Enrile meant that Villar’s fate is now sealed, with his colleagues having no choice but pass judgment on his ethical behavior.

Although Villar was given until end of office hours or 5 p.m. last Friday to give notice to the committee of the whole of his intention to controvert those presented against him, Enrile said they waited for Villar even beyond the deadline.

Enrile said he would direct the committee staff to come up with a report on the issue and hopefully present it for plenary deliberations when Congress resumes sessions next month, Nov. 9.

The charges against Villar stemmed from a complaint by Sen. Jamby Madrigal that he or his companies benefitted from the realignment of C-5 road extension project that was funded with two separate P200-million budgetary items included in the 2008 general appropriations act. It was a case of one project with two budgets of similar amounts.

Madrigal, was also directed to submit not later than 5 p.m. Friday her supposed pieces of evidence and have it formally received and marked by the committee.

Since May when the committee of the whole started hearing on Madrigal’s complaint, Villar has never attended any of the committee’s public hearings.

In one of those hearings, a budget monitoring official, lawyer Yolanda Doblon, testified that the order to insert a P200 million budget for the construction of the C5 road extension project in 2008 came from the office of then Senate President Manuel Villar.

Doblon, director general of the Legislative Budget and Research Management Office, specifically pointed to Villar’s consultant by the name of Adriano as the person who “dictated” the inclusion of the extra amount.

Enrile said there was never politics involved insofar as the preparation of the committee report was concerned. The Senate rules, he added, provide for the submission of the findings and recommendations of the panel following the termination of the proceedings.


Source: http://www.tribune.net.ph/headlines/20091019hed2.html