The Binays will not forgive their critics if Vice President Jejomar Binay gets elected to the presidency, according to Binay daughter and Makati Rep. Abigail Binay.
“We will not be vindictive, but it will be difficult for our family to forgive our critics. I for one will not forgive them,” she said in a television interview.
She said accusations leveled against them by their critics in the Senate and their political enemies in Makati have caused them “so much hurt, pain and suffering.”
“We are all affected by these attacks – all members of the family, me, my children, my nieces and nephews,” she said.
She added that the allegations have been “the worst and most vicious accusations” against the Binays in the nearly three decades that Vice President Binay has been in politics.
The Makati congresswoman named one particular accuser – Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV.
“Even if he apologizes to us now, that won’t matter,” she said.
She wondered why the senator “suddenly trained his guns on me.”
Trillanes has vowed to investigate Rep. Binay’s vermiculture (earthworm growing) projects in Makati. He claimed that the congresswoman allocated her pork barrel funds to a foundation composed of friends and members of the Binay family.
The senator said Makati was the wrong location for earthworm growing because the city is an asphalt jungle where there is no agricultural land.
Rep. Binay said she is not afraid of the senator’s plan, as she could fully account for her projects.
“They were not ghost projects. They really involved waste management. The worms are fed with rotten food like vegetables, which then become organic fertilizer, which beneficiaries could sell. They could also sell the worms,” she said.
She said beneficiaries needed only plant boxes and not agricultural land.
She remembered the project proponent and implementer as a non-government organization (NGO) named Gabay ng Masa Foundation.
She claimed that she did not know any foundation incorporator or director, and that she was dealing with a certain Francis as project manager.
Gabay ng Masa Foundation was among scores of questionable NGOs that squandered billions in lawmakers’ pork barrel funds from 2007 up to 2013, according to the Commission on Audit.
She could not remember how much she allocated for growing earthworms.
The website of the Department of Budget and Management shows that Binay used up her P70-million annual pork barrel allocation in 2011.
Of that amount, she allocated P11 million for livelihood projects, including P4 million for vermiculture. She spent P20 million for slope protection in four canals, P8 million for the de-silting of a creek and P10 million for the repair of Kalayaan Avenue.
Makati colleague Monique Lagdameo allotted P8 million for vermiculture.
Source: Philippine Star