Faeldon files ethics complaint vs. Trillanes: Put-up or shut up

Former Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon on Monday filed an ethics complaint against Senator Antonio Trillanes IV for allegedly engaging in improper conduct, abuse of right and privilege, and serious misconduct.

Faeldon personally filed the complaint with the Senate ethics committee. He has been detained at the Office of the Senate Sergeant-At-Arms for two weeks after refusing to answer questions on the P6.4-billion shabu shipment.

In his 14-page complaint, Faeldon said Trillanes should be meted a penalty of suspension or expulsion from office over his “unethical, unparliamentary and improper conduct.”

“My ethics complaint will compel Trillanes to put-up or shut up. If he cannot substantiate his scurrilous allegations against me, which he knows only too well that he cannot, then Trillanes should apologize to me and to the Filipino people,” Faeldon said through his lawyer Jose Diño Jr.

The complaint said the “calumny” against Faeldon began last May 2016 when he issued a statement based on “malicious lies.” In said statement, Trillanes alleged that Faeldon is part of then Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign team. “(Faeldon) is being used to divert the public’s attention from the main issue of Duterte’s P2.4 billion ill-gotten wealth.”

“That the respondent used the Philippine Senate and its facilities as a convenient tool for his calumnious statements, magnifies the extent and gravity of his unethical and improper conduct, as the same directly reflects on the Senate as an institution,” Faeldon said.

Faeldon also cited the statement of Trillanes wherein he accused the former commissioner of being “at the heart” of the shabu shipment controversy.

“To this day and after nine hearings of the Senate blue ribbon committee, however, respondent Sen. Trillanes has yet to produce even a single affidavit, even a single witness, or even a single document to substantiate his public and malicious imputations of serious crimes against complainant Faeldon,” the complaint said.

Faeldon said Trillanes deliberately lied and committed “improper conduct.”

In his statement read by Diño, Faeldon said the ethics committee should take “drastic steps” to punish Trillanes with nothing less than suspension or expulsion from office.

“Anyway, he will not be missed. Not by the Senate. Not by the Filipino people. Not one bit,” Faeldon said.

“It is high time that we stopped chasing the bully around the school yard. Let no one suffer any more in silence. I will stand up to him, on my own behalf, and on behalf of those he verbally raped and whose characters he assassinated, just because he felt like it, and worse, for media mileage for his political agenda,” Faeldon said. — RSJ, GMA News