Floirendo’s girl: It’s all about greed
DAVAO CITY – It’s all about greed – for wealth, power and influence.
This was how Cathy Binag, live-in partner of Davao del Norte Rep. Antonio “Tonyboy” Floirendo Jr., described the congressman’s bitter quarrel with Speaker Pantaleon “Bebot” Alvarez.
In a statement sent to reporters, Binag confirmed the altercation she had with Alvarez’s girlfriend, whom she identified as Jennifer Maliwanag Vicencio.
“Personally I know it’s deeper than what is being printed in the papers. It all boils down to greed,” Binag said yesterday.
“It’s true that I had an altercation with Miss Vicencio during the opening of the Masskara Festival in Bacolod late last year,” Binag confirmed in her statement.
“Let me make it clear that my earlier statement that the problem between my partner, Rep. Tonyboy Floirendo Jr., and his erstwhile friend Speaker Bebot Alvarez started with me and the Speaker’s girlfriend, is true,” she said.
“From then on, things spiraled out of control and one thing led
to another,” she added.
“But let me just make it clear that as to whether the incident with Miss Vicencio is correlated with the Speaker’s filing of case against my partner is beyond me,” she said.
Binag likewise said she finds it “petty for some matured men to be burning bridges of friendship over a girls’ spat.”
She added it was not her intention to drag the family of the Speaker into the issue as she “was merely answering questions from the media… about the Alvarez family.”
“If ever I hurt them, I am sorry. I never intended to hurt the Alvarez family because I know where they are coming from. But truth will set us all free,” Binag further said.
She also told that the Speaker was mad at them because his wife Emily and their children would always run to her and Floirendo for help whenever they were in trouble with Alvarez.
On Wednesday, Floirendo denied working for Alvarez’s ouster, saying he would never betray a friend.
“I never attempted to talk to Arroyo nor would I ever support any plot to oust Speaker Alvarez who, in the first place, is a good friend of mine and whom I fully supported during the last election and in his bid for the speakership. If ever there is an iota of truth to the ouster plot, I am 100 percent not part of it,” he said.
He added that he tried reaching out to Alvarez “but he refused to talk to me since this all started.”
Alvarez represents the first district of Davao del Norte, while Floirendo, son and heir of the late banana king and billionaire businessman Antonio Floirendo Sr., is representative of the second district.
The Speaker, however, was unmoved by Floirendo’s conciliatory tone. “It’s not his statement, it’s his PR’s,” he said in Filipino.