8 of 10 Pinoys want Binay to face probe

NEARLY eight out of 10 Filipinos believe Vice President Jejomar Binay should answer under oath the corruption allegations raised against him in the Senate.

Results of the September 26-29 survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) released on Mon- day showed 79 percent of 1,200 respondents want Binay to attend the Senate Blue Ribbon sub-committee hearing on the alleged overpriced Makati City Hall Building 2.

Ten percent opposed the idea while 11 percent of the respondents were

undecided. The survey has an error margin of ±3 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.

Despite the clear message, Binay has no plan of facing the Senate probe.

In a statement, Binay’s political affairs spokesperson Jonvic Remulla said the Senate has already “prejudged” Binay because of the actuations of Senators Alan Peter Cayetano and Antonio Trillanes IV, members of the three-man sub-committee.

Remulla said Trillanes went on record that his objective is to bring down the survey ratings of the Vice President, which already happened, and even send Binay to jail for allegedly accumulating ill-gotten wealth during his two-decade rule as Makati City mayor.

Cayetano, on the other hand, joined Trillanes in accepting the “unfounded claims” of former Makati vice mayor Ernesto Mercado as “gospel truth” and moved for state protection for him and two other witnesses against the Vice President.

It was Mercado who directly accused Binay of receiving at least 13-percent kickback from various projects of the Makati City government.

He also said that Binay owns a 350-hectare agricultural estate in Rosario, Batangas, whose development was financed by the former mayor’s alleged shady deals.