Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III on Tuesday challenged former Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon to pull out his ethics complaint against Senator Panfilo Lacson if he does not trust the senators who will decide on the case.
“He has no trust… pull it out,” said Sotto who rebuked Faeldon for questioning the partiality of the senators as the Senate committee on ethics and privileges has yet to decide on the form and substance of his ethics complaint.
Sotto, the ethics committee chairperson, also took a swipe at Faeldon over the latter’s claim that he appeared to have defended Lacson at the Senate ethics committee.
“I’m lawyering daw? Eh ‘di i-disbar mo ‘ko,” Sotto told reporters in an interview.
Faeldon’s legal counsel, lawyer Jose Diño, filed a motion to transfer the ethics complaint from the Senate Ethics committee to the Senate committee of the whole after the ethics committee opted to hold in abeyance the complaint against Lacson.
In a 12-page motion, Diño said the remedy is sought “to prevent an impending miscarriage of justice.” It also mentioned Sotto who “vowed to be impartial with the instant complaint,” but later “sang an entirely different tune.”
“Sad to say and with all due respect, he almost sounded like a legal counsel for the respondent, the legal arguments of whom he merely parroted, ending up with a conclusion,” the motion said.
Sotto said the various ethics complaints pending before his committee are not a priority at the moment, citing the 2018 budget and the tax reform bill as the focus of the Senate.
“We’re so busy with the TRAIN (Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Act) and budget and this is for the country. Itong mga kina Risa, Trillanes, kay Gordon, kay Ping, ano ‘to, sidelight ito of the more important things we should tackle for the country,” Sotto said.
Lacson, meanwhile, said that the conversion of a Senate committee into a Committee of the whole can only be made through a Senate resolution o formal motion in the plenary that will be voted upon by the members.
He merely shrugged off Faeldon’s motion to transfer his ethics complaint to the Committee of the Whole.
“Marami pang kakaining smuggled na bigas ni Faeldon para matuto. Pati trabaho ng senador gusto na niyang sakupin,” Lacson said.
Earlier, Lacson filed graft and economic sabotage charges against Faeldon before the Office of the Ombudsman for allegedly ordering the release of rice shipments worth P34 million despite lack of permits.
