Alan Peter Cayetano's speech on Sept. 5

Posted on Ellen Tordesillas website. Key points:

I was right Mr Speaker, Tama yung certificate but may dagdag. Instead of 22 digits which I mentioned in the committee on justice the certification has 23 numbers. May bawas din instead of PGma, the First Gentleman, Congressmen Iggy and Mikey Arroyo and in any name for their benefit only Atty Mike Arroyos name appears. Why were they entertained? Why did the bank accommodate them on a holiday? Why the belated certification to include the President? This is for the first Gentleman to answer. But the point is more questions were raised than answers, when by simply signing the waiver we could produce the information needed for a conclusive finding.

Yesterday the President asked me to stop speaking on this issue, based on the Bank certification. Madam President maybe you are being misled by your husband.

1st I only mentioned this once in the committee on justice, then I clarified on television that this is part of the impeachment complaint. After that It was the First Gentleman who went to town with all sorts of challenges and threats. It is He who has made a spectacle of this. And continues to make a spectacle by his supposed attempts to clear your name, now dragging you into the picture. Let me give the solution sign the waiver and we end the issue here and now.

2nd The supposed new evidence that the German bank account only contains 10 digits. Again your husband and his lawyers misled you. It is a half truth. International Bank account number was adopted by the European Committee for Banking standards and was later adopted as ISO 13616: 1997. It is up to each country’s national banking community to decide on the length of the BBAN ( Basic Bank Account Number) for accounts in that country, but its length must be fixed for any given country. It may be correct that their Bban is 10 digits but the Iban or the International Bank Account Number is different for different countries. Thus French and Italians use 27 digits, Spanish use 24, Austrians use 20, Danish use 18 and Germans use 22 digits!

Your lawyer keeps misleading the public by saying that the account numbers used in Germany contain only 10 digits when the international bank account number is actually 22 digits. And in fact this was never mentioned in the certification yet the First Gentleman’s lawyers make it appear that this is part of the certification.

Why the heavy reliance Madam President on certification from a bank?
When Jose Pidal was unmasked BPI family savings bank certified that as of Aug 29 2003 they did not have a bank account in the name of Jose Pidal. But in the same letter they confirmed that indeed there was an account opened in late 1997 and closed in the year 2000. When the Blue Ribbon committee in the senate tried to get more facts out of the Jose Pidal accounts someone who claimed to be the Jose Pidal simply invoked his right to privacy. Are the President and the first gentleman invoking their right to privacy on anything and every thing except a 22 digit account in an international German Bank. Kung bubuksan and isang account bakit hindi buksan ang lahat? Sign the waiver!

Read the whole thing, and read the comments that followed it. I don't think this is over yet.

MORE from Lito Banayo:

Why is it that as mightily as her first gentleman and the rest of her family try to disprove accusations of humongous unexplained wealth, as unbelievable are their claims are to the general public? Sure Congressman Allan Peter Cayetano has yet to come up with solid evidence to pin down the Arroyos on an alleged secret European account that passed through a German private bank.

Yet the ferocity of El Esposo rico’s reaction, which under normal circumstances should have been accepted as righteous anger and indignation, is coming out as arrogant and belligerent bullying to screen the whole truth.

Assuming for the sake of argument, people say, that Cayetano goofed on the bank’s identity, or its branch, or its number, or even its nominal or numerical client identity, why cannot El Esposo rico y su familia sign the comprehensive waiver that Cayetano asks? If there is nothing to hide, then, as Dolly Parton used to bellow, "let it all hang". This kind of homespun logic is what people ask of the incredible Arroyos and their gaggle of highly-remunerated lawyers.

Even the protestations of Atty. Romulo Macalintal, election lawyer turned banking expert, sound lame and obfuscatory. He reasons: "What will you waive if the accounts do not even exist"? Precisely, Atty. Macalintal, people react, "why be afraid to sign a waiver knowing fully well that there is nothing to hide?"

When the Doña’s attack dogs, Corpus y Mawanay, y la China con cara de gaw-gaw, and all those liars who invented 700 million dollars in US accounts, plus fabulous properties too, and publicized their falsehoods through a widely-publicized demolition job against the Dona’s hated Panfilo Lacson, what did Lacson do? He issued a waiver.

But when Lacson resurrected Jose Pidal, the mysterious alias of somebody fabulously wealthy, not knowing at the time that the surname Pidal truly existed once upon a not so distant time, and was genetically linked to his expose’s object, what did the self-confessed Pidal say? Right to privacy.

Privacy then; non-waiver now. As the street filosofo’s say, "lumang tugtugin", and as their American counterparts would yell, "you pullin’ mah leg?"

Just sign the waiver, Pidal.