Sen. Richard Gordon, chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and one of the senators probing the Pharmally issue, said President Rodrigo Duterte’s tirades against him only meant the he was hiding something.
IF anything else, President Rodrigo Duterte’s continued tirades against senators probing the anomalies regarding the billions of pesos worth of contracts awards to Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp., has only encouraged some senators to “dig deeper” into the issue.
During an interview Tuesday, Sen. Richard Gordon, chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and one of the senators probing the Pharmally issue, said President Duterte’s tirades only meant he was “hiding something.”
Gordon in particular has been the target of the President’s rants, with Duterte warning the senator that he will actively campaign against the latter in the upcoming 2022 elections.
“The more we will investigate because we will look for who really was the connection of these people. A P625,000 corporation can’t do such a big deal and get [nearly] P8.7 billion. It’s really puzzling as it has no track record,” he continued.
The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee is currently investigating the procurement of allegedly “overpriced” personal protective equipment, face masks, and face shields made by the Department of Budget and Management-Procurement Service (DBM-PS) on behalf of the Department of Health in 2020.
At the center of the probe is Pharmally, which bagged government contracts worth over P8.6 billion in 2020 despite being only several months old and having just P625,000 in paid-up capital.
In his interview, Gordon also questioned Duterte’s defense of former DBM-PS head Christopher Lao and former presidential economic adviser Michael Yang.
“He should answer and not side with the people we are investigating,” the senator said.
“He’s even defending his friend and badmouthing a co-equal branch of government.”
“Hubris”
Meanwhile, detained opposition Senator Leila de Lima said President Duterte’s requiring his clearance before his Cabinet members attend Senate hearings is plain “presidential hubris.”
In her latest “Dispatches from Crame,” where she is currently detained due to drug charges, De Lima added that she is “not surprised” by what she perceived as the President’s “gag order.”
"Duterte's gag order on Sec. Duque and other Cabinet members, preventing them from attending the Blue Ribbon Committee hearing is expected. It was only a matter of time before Duterte resorted to an illegal action to prevent the unraveling of the truth in the Senate hearing," she said in her dispatch.
"Duterte will continue to push the government to a constitutional crisis, if only to save the Davao boys in their P8.7 billion plunder, the details of which are slowly uncovered in the Senate hearing," she added.
Tags: #RichardGordon, #SenateBlueRibbonCommittee, #Pharmally, #corruption, #anomalies, #RodrigoDuterte