Binay ‘gate-crashes’ KBP meet to say sorry

TAGAYTAY CITY—Vice President Jejomar Binay yesterday apologized to Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) for abruptly backing out of a Nov. 27 debate with Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV on corruption allegations when he was mayor of Makati City.

“I hope I will not be treated as a gate-crasher,” Binay told KBP officials during his unexpected

appearance at their three-day conference in Taal Vista Hotel.

“This is a formal apology to the members of KBP. I know you had prepared for this [debate], you had informed your members there would be such a thing,” he said.

Binay said his decision to scratch the debate was prompted by a media interview on Nov. 9, when he was asked by a reporter to comment on Trillanes “preparing and even getting a tutor” for their debate.

“If that’s the case, I’d rather that it not push through. I always had that feeling that, you know, the opposite of what I will say will come out in the end,” Binay said. He called Trillanes an “opportunist.” KBP’s Herman Basbaño said the Vice President made known on short notice that he would be arriving at the conference.

“It’s the Vice President asking for it. Who are we not to accept?” he said.

When he stopped at Tagaytay City, Binay was visiting several Cavite towns for the inauguration of the Office for Senior Citizens Affairs facilities and the distribution of medical equipment and wheelchairs.

Appreciation

In an interview with reporters, Binay expressed appreciation for President Aquino’s remarks that the Senate inquiry into the alleged irregularities while he was Makati mayor was taking too long.

“If that’s the statement of the President, we respect that,” Binay said. Asked if he appreciated Mr. Aquino’s remarks, Binay said, “Certainly.”

In an interview with Filipino reporters in Beijing on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, Mr. Aquino said he hoped all evidence against Binay in the investigation of the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee would be presented so those liable could be charged and “we can all focus and go back to our other work.”

“President Aquino was simply expressing his views on the appropriate mechanisms for ferreting out the truth and for exacting accountability in a manner consistent with the law,” Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said in a statement issued after Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III suggested that the Chief Executive was interfering in the affairs of a coequal branch of government.

Coloma stressed that when Mr. Aquino commented on the hearings on Binay’s alleged illgotten wealth being conducted by Pimentel’s panel, the President only suggested that “the Senate consider if its inquiry has matured to go into the more formal process so that its efforts to address alleged anomalies in government may be brought into full fruition.”

Mr. Aquino had observed that the Senate probe was going on “in dribs and drabs.”