The senator who brought in whistle-blower George Rabusa to spill the beans on Reyes looked like he had barely slept the morning after the former AFP chief of staff killed himself.

Reporters chanced upon a rather soft-spoken Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, who insisted there wasn’t “anything wrong” with the way he grilled Reyes, 65, over the P50-million send-off gift (pabaon) the latter allegedly got.

Two senators Wednesday said they would push the chamber to “moderate” the conduct of hearings on corruption in the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said he had asked his colleagues to be “civil” to resource persons at the hearings where on one occasion Reyes was called a moron. “I already took that up with them—that let’s be civil about the whole affair,” he said.

“You can ask questions, exercise your right of cross-examination, but you have to be very circumspect in the words that you use in asking the question and the manner you ask the question,” said Enrile, a former defense secretary.

Friends said Reyes was driven to shoot himself as a result of the Senate hearings that linked him to corruption in the military.

Wake-up call

Sen. Gregorio Honasan, a former Army colonel, said Reyes’ suicide should serve as a “wake-up call” for senators.

“We can moderate the conduct of our hearings so we can take into consideration the reputation, the name, the future of the children and grandchildren who have nothing to do with this issue,” said Honasan, a classmate of former military comptroller Carlos Garcia at the Philippine Military Academy. Garcia is charged with plunder.

Red eyes

But Estrada—whose eyes were conspicuously red with dark circles around them—indicated that he should have been more circumspect during the blue ribbon hearings.

“I’m practicing to gag myself first. I don’t want to say anything while the family of Secretary Reyes is still in mourning,” he told reporters.

In the first and only blue ribbon committee hearing he attended on Jan. 27, Reyes was repeatedly scolded by Estrada for insisting that he be allowed to directly question Rabusa, military budget officer from 2000 to 2002.

At the hearing, Rabusa said that he delivered P50 million (in dollars so the money won’t be bulky) as send-off gift to Reyes upon his retirement as AFP chief of staff.

He added that Reyes also received P5 million monthly for his personal use and another P5 million monthly for office expenses while he was the chief of staff.

Slush fund

Rabusa said the money came from a military slush fund drawn from the salaries of “ghost” battalions.

Reyes said in Filipino: “Can I ask Colonel Rabusa, if, during the time that I was chief of staff, if I became greedy? Did I ask him for anything? Did I demand money from him, officially or unofficially?”

Estrada shouted back: “This is not an issue of greed. The issue is if you collected money, if you were corrupt as chief (of staff) of the Armed Forces. Who cares if you were generous?”

Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who staged a failed coup in 2003, also blasted Reyes—his senior at the Philippine Military Academy by more than 20 years—when the latter complained that his reputation was under attack.

“If you are so concerned about your name, you should have fixed yourself while you were in office!” an angry Trillanes thundered, cutting Reyes short. “This is the time of reckoning. You better find very good lawyers.”

Biggest insult

But the biggest insult apparently came from Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago who described Reyes as “one of the greatest morons in history” if he knew nothing about the military corruption under his watch.

Following Reyes’ death, Enrile said he was willing to cut Reyes’ family some slack after Santiago told reporters that authorities could still run after relatives in the event of a forfeiture case.

“As far as I’m concerned, unless there is a very clear and strong, uncontradicted evidence that the family of Angie had anything to do with anything involving his activities as chief of staff or secretary of national defense, then I’ll probably put my foot down and say, ‘No. Do not bring in the family,’” he said.

Spare Reyes wife

Estrada said he would rather that Reyes’ wife Teresita be spared from the hearing. Teresita Reyes received pocket money from the military every time she traveled abroad, according to Rabusa.

Estrada earlier threatened to summon the wife of ex-military comptroller Jacinto Ligot, a regular companion of Reyes’ wife in her many travel overseas, if Ligot would refuse to answer questions about his alleged houses in the United States.

“As much as possible, I do not want to invite his wife, much less the wife of Secretary Reyes,” Estrada said.

Honasan was open to inviting Reyes’ family, but said the decision should be made by the entire chamber.

“Not immediately. Maybe after the burial of Reyes,” Honasan said.

No to executive sessions

Enrile rejected the proposal to hold the next hearings behind closed doors, warning that the public might suspect that senators were “hiding something.”

Rabusa on Wednesday said he would keep testifying against generals implicated in a corruption scandal despite the suicide of Reyes.

“I started this and I’ll finish it,” Rabusa told a TV network. He said at least four retired generals, including two former military chiefs of staff, could be charged with plunder based on evidence in his possession.

Rabusa told The Associated Press that military officials padded budgets for annual US-Philippine military war exercises in 2001 and 2002 so they could divert the excess amount to the slush fund.

As a result, the counterpart fund contributed by the US military for the exercises was also in excess, he said.

Rabusa said he did not know what happened to the additional US payment and was ready to help American authorities if they decided to investigate.

Christian Esguerra, Phil. Daily Inquirer