The legal counsel of the leading presidential candidate Mayor Rodrigo Duterte of Davao City disputed the claim of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV that the tough-talking mayor hired 11,000 ghost employees in Davao City during the year 2014. Mayor Duterte lawyers were composed of some of the country’s most brilliant and prominent names in the Filipino communities of respected lawyers.
Atty. Panelo, the legal counsel of Mayor Rody Duterte was quoted as saying “If the Commission on Audit (COA) found the hiring of contractual employees irregular, then it would have already filed a case against Duterte. But there’s none, so what is Trillanes talking about? He is a congenital liar and a publicity hound,” Salvador Panelo, Duterte’s lawyer, said.
According to PDP-Laban spokesperson Atty. Paola Alvarez the accusations raised by Sen. Trillanes against Mayor Rodrigo Duterte of Davao City was an old issue.
The lawyer was quoted as saying This is an old issue that Mayor Duterte has already explained without any basis. The city government hired various employees and assigned them to different agencies for a certain period of time. They were contractual employees that the city government accommodated to give them temporary employment,” Alvarez said.
As part of the lawyer’s response against Sen. Trillanes, Atty. Alvarez turned the table on the senator by asking, “Why is it that your driver and household help are on the list of your Senate consultants.”
Sen. Trillanes was accused by numerous allegations that more than half of the monthly allocation for his office in the Senate went to the salaries of his consultants, which allegedly includes a houseboy, family drivers, media workers, campaign donors, ex-mutineer-friends and a brother who was supposedly getting P71,200 monthly allowance or salary.
The Duterte lawyers also revealed that the senator “spent the biggest Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel when he was for the crime of launching two failed coups against the Macapagal administration, into his so-called consultants.