Gordon files ethics complaint vs Trillanes

MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Richard Gordon made good last night his threat to file an ethics complaint against Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV for his “unparliamentary behavior” during the hearing of the Senate Blue Ribbon committee last week.

Gordon filed before the committee, chaired by Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III, a 23-page complaint against Trillanes for “unparliamentary acts, language and conduct.”

“The complaint against the continuous, unabated, unparliamentary acts, language, and conduct of Sen. Antonio F. Trillanes IV, which is causing damage to the Senate and the people and therefore, is of primordial concern,” Gordon said in his prefatory statement.

He said the complaint was “about maintaining the dignity of the Senate because all senators owe the public a public institution that, among others, deserves their respect.”

Gordon, who chairs the Blue Ribbon committee, and Trillanes quarreled last week after the latter accused members of the panel of protecting some members of President Duterte’s family accused of being leaders of the so-called Davao group that engages in smuggling at the Bureau of Customs.

Gordon said it was about time Trillanes be taught a lesson as he had previous run-ins with other senators or has called his colleagues names. He said Trillanes would apologize but later commit the same acts against fellow senators.

Earlier in the day, he said at least 14 senators are backing his move to have Trillanes investigated by the ethics panel.

Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III led 16 members of the majority bloc in a closed-door caucus to discuss, among others, Gordon’s plan to file a complaint.

“He just keeps on doing the same thing. A man like that does not belong in a Senate of august gentlemen. You do not do that to a chairman, you do not do that to your fellow senators and say they are a bunch of puppets or that they cannot do anything. The Senate is already a damaged institution,” Gordon told reporters after the four-hour caucus that started at 11 a.m.

“At the rate things are going, the Senate is being maligned by this guy, rules going out of the window,” he said.

Some senators who attended the meeting said Gordon spoke at length about Trillanes’ habit of disparaging his colleagues.

Pimentel said it was unfortunate that the incident had to reach the ethics panel but “we can’t do anything about it because what happened wasn’t good so this must be resolved.”

Sotto said he would set a meeting on Monday to discuss the matter.

He said the procedure will be that each member of the panel will be given a copy of the complaint, after which, he will write Trillanes to formally respond to the letter.

After some hearings, the committee will come up with its recommendations to be approved in a plenary.

Sanctions, if any, will range from reprimand, suspension to expulsion, senators said.

Trillanes earlier told reporters that he was getting “impatient” that Gordon had not yet filed his complaint.

“It will be a long process and I am confident — as I’ve said, I have not done anything improper or unparliamentary,” he said, adding it was premature for Gordon to claim that he has support for the complaint.

Trillanes accused of ‘pork’ graft

As this developed, an anti-pork barrel coalition yesterday accused Trillanes of corruption involving multimillion-peso pork barrel funds he received during the previous administration.

The Coalition for Investigation and Prosecution, led by former Manila councilor Greco Belgica and Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption founding chairman Dante Jimenez, cited records from the Department of Budget and Management showing questionable expenditures from the opposition senator’s Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) funds.

The documents, which were submitted to the Department of Justice (DOJ) yesterday, showed that Trillanes has received a total of P245 million in DAP funds in three tranches (P100 million, P50 million and P95 million).

The group’s investigation showed that the senator donated P10 million from his DAP funds to a non-government organization that allegedly turned out to be a donor and not recipient of donations.

“He had so many ghost projects that we discovered,” Belgica alleged.

He further bared that Trillanes used a “very unique scheme” where he distributed his DAP funds to smaller projects.

“These (pieces of) evidence against Sen. Trillanes are enough to pursue cases against him. But we want the DOJ to further investigate and validate and it would be up to them if they would pursue separate cases against him,” he explained to reporters in the DOJ.

Jimenez, for his part, slammed Trillanes for claiming he was never involved in corruption.

“He said he is not corrupt, but this evidence shows he is,” Jimenez alleged, referring to Trillanes.

The coalition submitted the records to the DOJ yesterday and asked the department to conduct fact-finding probe and pursue possible cases against authors of the DAP, particularly former president Benigno Aquino III and former budget secretary Florencio Abad.