Mar on supposed plot to jail Binay: Is he a thief?

MANILA, Philippines — Why will he be jailed? Did he steal something?

These questions were raised on Tuesday by Liberal Party (LP) presidential candidate Manuel Roxas II when asked to react to Vice President Jejomar Binay’s clam that there is a sinister plan to send him to jail before the 2016 polls.

“Wala ako rito para makipagpingpungan sa mga statement na wala namang katuturan. (I am not here to reply to nonsense statements). Maybe you should ask him (Binay) why he thinks he will be jailed,” Roxas told reporters at the LP headquarters in Quezon City.

“Did he steal? Is he a thief? Did he do something wrong? Why will he be jailed?” he added.

Both Binay and Roxas are seeking the presidency in the upcoming elections. The 2016 presidential race will serve as a political rematch of the two candidates who faced off with each other during the 2010 vice presidential race.

Binay, now the standard-bearer of the opposition United Nationalist Alliance, defeated Roxas by about 740,000 votes in 2010.

On Monday, Binay claimed to have received information about a plan to file a case against him before the Sandiganbayan and send him to jail before the elections.

Speaking to editors, reporters and columnists of The STAR, Binay said a warrant of arrest against him would be issued by January or March.

The vice president is facing five plunder complaints before the Ombudsman over the alleged irregularities in local projects when he was mayor of Makati.

Binay said he expects the complaint involving the supposedly overpriced Makati City Hall parking building to be elevated to the Sandiganbayan. The project is now being investigated by the Senate Blue Ribbon committee hearing.

Aside from the Makati City Hall parking building controversy, Binay has also been tagged in the allegedly overpriced Makati Science High School Building, the purported anomalies in the construction of a College of Nursing Building in the University of Makati, and the alleged illegal conversion of a 16,000-square meter government property in Barangay Comembo to a private property.

The latest plunder complaint against Binay stemmed from the allegedly irregular sale of a property owned by the Boy Scouts of the Philippines to developer Alphaland Corporation.

Binay has denied the allegations, dismissing them as black propaganda crafted by his political rivals.

The allegations against Binay, however, have affected the vice president’s numbers in presidential surveys.

From being the survey frontrunner, Binay dropped to third place behind Sen. Grace Poe and Roxas in the latest poll results issued by the Social Weather Stations.

The vice president was also statistically tied in second place with Roxas at the latest Pulse Asia survey, which was also topped by Poe.