NO INTENTION OF HITTING ABALOS
BELOW THE BELT -- PIMENTEL

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today refuted criticisms that he had allegedly been unfair to Commission on Elections Chairman Benjamin Abalos during a Senate hearing on the national broadband controversy by asking him questions that were "too personal" and "unrelated" to the subject of the inquiry.

Pimentel said he did not commit any impropriety by inquiring from Abalos if he knew a certain Evelyn Silagon because of information relayed to him that the two have some kind of association and business dealings.

He said Abalos quickly reacted by saying he was shocked over the text message circulating about his alleged extra-marital affairs with Silagon while denying that he has sired a daughter with her. The senator said he then asked whether the Comelec chief had a son with that woman.

"He gave quite a long answer. He thought I was interested in the romantic angle. I was not. I was interested in the economic linkage between him and this lady who is reportedly fronting for him in many businesses. That was the angle I was trying to pursue," the minority leader said.

He stressed that this is undoubtedly a valid question to ask, adding that there are even allegations that certain secret bank accounts belonging to Abalos were allegedly in the name of that woman.

Pimentel said he first came to know about Ms. Silagon not through a text message that was being spread around by still unidentified sources but through "a witness."

He said this informant told him that the woman was present at a meeting between Abalos and certain individuals during the last congressional and local elections at Wack Wack Golf and Country Club in Mandaluyong City in which the case of Maguindanao provincial election supervisor Lintang Bedol was supposedly discussed.

Bedol was accused by the opposition of fabricating the results of the May 14, 2007 senatorial election in Maguindanao.

But Sen. Pimentel said he refrained from pursuing the issue of the Maguindanao poll fraud because this was not the subject of the investigation.

"I understand she is running some businesses for Abalos and that is what I wanted to pursue."

The senator from Mindanao decried that some quarters from the administration and the media were quick to gang up on him over his questioning of Abalos, thinking he hit the Comelec chairman below the belt without bothering to get his side of the story.