MACTAN, Cebu—Vice President Jejomar Binay on Monday dared his opponents in the presidential race to join him in signing a waiver that would open his bank accounts to scrutiny and to undergo a lifestyle check to find out who among them are clean or corrupt.
Binay, who says he has been falsely accused of plunder, presented the joint waiver and other documents at a press conference at the Waterfront Hotel-Mactan.
Binay had tried to bring these documents to the second presidential debate on Sunday, but citing the debate rules, organizers disallowed him from doing so.
At the press conference, Binay said each presidential candidate should present their statement of assets, liabilities and net worth since they joined the government.
He took aim at his bitter rival, administration candidate Manuel Roxas II, accusing him of making money from contracts when he was secretary of the departments of Transportation and
Communications and Interior and Local Government.
Binay cited former Metro Rail Transit manager Al Vitangcol III’s and Czech Ambassador Josef Rychtar’s claim that Roxas was involved in the $30-million extortion attempt at the MRT.
He also cited the overpricing done by Mahindra, an alleged favored supplier of patrol jeeps that were found to be substandard and overpriced and were procured during Roxas’ stint at DILG.
Roxas has denied any involvement in anomalous contracts, but Binay said Roxas was not as clean as he claimed to be.
He again referred to Roxas as a disciple of Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, who said a big lie repeated often enough would be accepted as truth.
Binay said he was surprised at the demeanor of Senator Grace Poe at Sunday’s debate.
“I was surprised at her reaction,” Binay said in Filipino about Poe’s response to his question about her nationality and her being a naturalized American citizen. “She joined in the attacks on me. We are godparents to each other’s children, but all this is forgotten when it comes to politics.”
Binay had only kind words for Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, however.
Still, Binay urged all his opponents to sign a waiver to allow the Anti-Money Laundering Council to check their bank accounts and those of their family members.
The waiver would authorize AMLC or its representative to “open and check all bank accounts under my name, under my spouse’s name, my children’s name and my children’s children’s name to ensure full transparency in this election process,” Binay said.
The waiver also indicated that the candidates would voluntarily submit themselves to a lifestyle and government service performance check in accordance with law.
Binay brought the documents with him to the debate Sunday, but was unable to present them because the Commission on Elections rules disallowed the use of notes or documents during the event.
The argument over the rules delayed Sunday’s debate by an hour and a half.
Binay said the documents he brought would have disproved the allegations against him.
Binay also brought with him his medical certificate showing he was physically and mentally fit to mount a nationwide campaign for president; the plaque for the 2011 Seal of Good House Keeping from the DILG and signed by the late DILG s ecretary Jesse Robredo; the plaque for the 2014 Blue Certification for Business Permits from the Office of the Ombudsman signed by Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales; and the plaque from the National Competitive Council for being the 1st Place Most Competitive City in the overall competitiveness category.
United Nationalist Alliance president Toby Tiangco said Binay’s performance during the second presidential debate surpassed their expectations.
“We are very satisfied with VP’s performance, actually, more than what the team expected out of the debate,” Tiangco told Radyo 5. With Vito Barcelo
