In arguably the most bizarre situation in the history of this country’s electoral system, Vice President Jejomar Binay went into the current electoral process with numerous very serious charges against him. The charges, mostly based on allegations of violations by Binay of the laws governing government procurement, reporting of public officials’ wealth and use of the nation’s banking facilities, were the results of investigations and researches conducted by a trio of government institutions, to wit, the Commission on Audit, the Senate and the Anti-Money Laundering Council.
t will be recalled that the Vice President’s response to the charges was made up of two parts. One part was a counter-charge that the Senate-CoA-AMLC onslaught against him was a political exercise intended to derail his plan to run for the Presidency in the 2016 election. The second part was the Constitutional precept that a person is innocent until proven guilty.
Jejomar Binay clearly is very angry with these three institutions: the Senate, AMLC and CoA. He claims that they have been peddling lies, distortions and prejudgments about him. Given his need to court votes and to convey to the voters the impression that he is a persecuted and oppressed Opposition candidate, the Vice President has been trying very hard to keep his cool. He will exact his revenge once he is sworn into the Presidency. Then he will do everything retaliatory against those three institutions.
The question that knowledgeable observers are asking in this connection is, what can a vengeful and retaliating Jejomar Binay do against the Senate, CoA and AMLC?
Even a President elected with a big popular mandate cannot do much against the Senate, which is one-half of the Constitutionally ordained branches of the government. More than the House of Representatives, the upper chamber of Congress is jealous of its powers and prerogatives and historically has fiercely resisted any attempt by Malacañang to control it. The current Congress has savaged Binay’s reputation—in fact it has left that reputation in tatters—and is likely to pursue its investigation of the former Makati City mayor’s alleged wrongdoing when it reconvenes in July. Whatever the political complexion of the future Senate, the findings of the recent Binay investigations are already on record and will await responses from the Vice President.
Nor will a President Binay be able to do anything about CoA, also a Constitutional body. CoA has its Constitutional mandate and does not have to kowtow to the political branches of the government. The new chairman of CoA was appointed recently by President Aquino and will be in office for the next year. A CoA chairman who decided to go easy on the anti-Binay charges in the face of strong and irrefutable evidence would face an overwhelming outcry from the public, especially the media. CoA’s records regarding the Binay mayoral regime are likewise in place and ready for presentation at the appropriate time.
That leaves AMLC. The knowledgeable observers are asking one another how a President Binay intends to deal with AMLC, a non-Constitutional body.
A President Binay theoretically could move to have his Congressional allies repeal or severely emasculate the law that created AMLC. That’s theory. The reality is that AMLC is virtually unrepealable. AMLC was enacted into law by Congress under compulsion by the International Monetary Fund and the international financial community—grouped into a Paris-based financial group—as the quid pro quo for removal of the Philippines from the Paris group’s blacklist of countries that engage in or tolerate money laundering. Failure to enact the law would have meant the Philippines’ continuing to wallow in the same money-laundering trough as the notorious Carribean, African and Eastern European countries. Congress barely made the deadline set by the Paris group for enactment of the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
Like the Senate and CoA, AMLC is ready with its documentary evidence, supplied by Philippine banks, of unexplained and questionable financial transactions by Binay and his alleged dummies involving enormous sums of money. AMLC is just waiting to produce the documents at the appropriate time and place. The documents will survive a repeal of the AMLC law.
And so I go back to the title of this column. What will President Binay do about AMLC? This assumes that there is something that he would be able to do. But, as explained above, that is not the case. So he would be stuck with AMLC.
E-mail: rudyromero777@yahoo.com
