SENATOR Antonio Trillanes IV on Wednesday branded Senator Richard Gordon a lackey of President Rodrigo Duterte, and said his committee report was a cover-up of the surge in extrajudicial killings under the current administration.
The draft report of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, Trillanes said, only showed that Gordon was really a “Duterte collaborator and enabler of what’s happening.”
Trillanes tore into Gordon for shutting down the hearings after Senator Leila de Lima presented Edgardo Matobato, a self-confessed assassin who said the President led the Davao death squad when he was still mayor of the city.
In a media briefing Tuesday, Gordon said his committee found no basis for the claim that the extrajudicial killings of drug suspects was state-sponsored.
Gordon also questioned the existence of the Davao death squad, calling it a media creation that was not proven during the hearings.
Trillanes, however, insisted that the drug killing were sanctioned by the President.
“We have shown evidences and presented witnesses. There was also one video in Dasmariñas. The policemen got an overseas Filipino worker who was found dead the following morning. He was wrapped in masking tape. He has a carton [sign that said] he’s a drug addict. So that evidence was nothing to him?” Trillanes said of Gordon.
“Senator Gordon is just covering up for President Duterte,” Trillanes said, dismissing his committee report as “a piece of garbage.”
He also said the committee’s recommendation to file murder charges against Matobato was an example of selective justice and twisted logic.
While they wanted Matobato to face charges based on his own testimony, they didn’t believe his testimony linking the President to the death of more than 1,000 people, Trillanes said.
He was even accused of lying and threatened with perjury, he added.
Earlier, Gordon slammed Trillanes and Senator Leila de Lima for walking out of the hearings.
“They behaved very badly by walking out,” Gordon said in his report. “A senator doesn’t do that.”
De Lima said she has not yet been given a copy of the report, even though she is a member of the committee.
While the report was distributed to members during a caucus Tuesday afternoon, De Lima said she was not informed about it.
“I’m waiting for it, because I definitely would be filing a separate report, either purely dissenting or both concurring and dissenting. Concurring in certain parts, and dissenting in certain parts. How can I do that when I haven’t seen the report? They don’t want to show me. Is that deliberate? That’s why I want to ask them, am I still being treated a member of the committee? That’s basic courtesy,” she said.
Gordon declined to comment on Trillanes attack.
“I don’t want to make a side show out of the Senate. I cannot have everybody agree on what I do but I can tell I did it the hard way and I did it in accordance with my conscience. If you read it, you will see how frank I am even with the President. Of course to somebody who believes his own press release, I can’t do anything about it.”
He bristled when told that Trillanes called his report a piece of garbage.
“I’m sorry that he said that about his fellow senators. I don’t know where he comes from and he calls hard work garbage,” said Gordon.
Gordon also said he believed Matobato when he said he killed Sali Makdum.
“If he admitted that he killed another person, would I not believe him?” he said.