Sen. Risa Hontiveros yesterday took up the cudgels for a job applicant “scammed” by Italy-based Alpha Assistenza SRL after Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano accused her of spouting hearsay testimony during a public hearing of the Senate Committee on Migrant Workers.

Hontiveros, a strong defender of overseas Filipino workers, took strong exception to Cayetano’s line of questioning of Apple Cabasis, one of the hundreds of Alpha’s victims who lost 2,500 euros each (about P151,000) in an alleged immigration scam.

The exchange between the two senators prompted panel chair Sen. Raffy Tulfo to call for a one-minute break.

After admitting his closeness to Philippine Consul General Elmer Cato, Cayetano questioned Cabasis over her previous statement, including “sentiments shared with her by Alpha ‘victims’ in Milan” that Cato had sat on their complaints.

Cato has filed a cyber libel complaint against this paper, Cabasis and her fellow complainants, namely, Vanessa Antonio and Enrique Catilo, claiming they could not have known that he sat on the complaints against Alpha since they were in the Philippines and not in Italy.

DAILY TRIBUNE and the three private respondents have yet to get a copy of the complaint purportedly filed by Cato in Pampanga on 29 January.

During the committee’s first hearing last 7 February, both Hontiveros and Tulfo questioned Cato’s filing of the cyber libel charges against the alleged victims of Alpha. “Damn, what is wrong with you, sir?” Tulfo asked Cato at the time.

On Tuesday, Cayetano, who was absent in the first hearing, berated officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs represented in the hearing by Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega for letting Cato handle the Alpha scam issue by himself for months before sending a fact-finding team to Milan in September last year.

Complainants against Alpha Assistenza had told DAILY TRIBUNE’s digital show Usapang OFW hosted by Ma. Bettina Fernandez and Alan Hernandez that Respicio had claimed a closeness with Cato.

“Which of the things you told TRIBUNE was personal knowledge and just hearsay?” Cayetano zeroed in on Cabasis, after saying that the Alpha problem should have merited the attention of DFA higher-ups and the Philippine ambassador to Italy.

In response, Cabasis said her personal knowledge was limited to her case against Krizelle Respicio, who is facing nearly a hundred complaints each in Italy and the Philippines, with Alpha co-owner Frederick Dutaro.

Nonetheless, Cabasis stressed that the statements in the newspaper attributed to her, particularly the alleged inaction of Cato, were complaints from the Filipinos in Italy who felt that Cato was sitting on their complaints.

“It really happened to them [because] not only one (but many) complained about it,” she said.

Cayetano then defended Cato from the accusations that he ignored the grievances of the victims.

“Can the ConGen face 1,200 people at the same time? Why are you then complaining that you were not faced by the ConGen personally?” he asked. “Do we, senators, face each of you personally? We want to, but there are 110 million Filipinos. That is what I am saying about hearsay.”

It was at this point that Hontiveros cut off Cayetano, saying, “If I just may, I just want to emphasize what Ms. Apple said to us at the last hearing. Perhaps not all of it was personal knowledge, which she clarified in the last hearing, but some was just relayed by other victims.”

“We can say that many of those she mentioned can be considered personal knowledge — either her personal experience or what was relayed to her by fellow countrymen in Milan,” Hontiveros explained.

Cayetano then said, “It (a statement told to one by another) is different from personal knowledge here. We’re lawyers here, so we have to make that a fact.”

Hontiveros fired back that she was not a lawyer, but that she nonetheless believed Cabasis’s statement was not hearsay. She and Cayetano then spoke at the same time, which prompted Senator Tulfo to call for a one-minute suspension.

When the session resumed, Hontiveros picked off from where she left off, saying: “I just want to put a value on what our resource speakers have been saying here, that it was not mere hearsay. That is the main point of my interjection.”

Cayetano then apologized, saying he was “just zealous” about matters related to the Department of Foreign Affairs, which he once headed.

He said that at DFA, he picked Cato to work for him as a former journalist.

During the hearing, Tulfo asked Respicio, who joined the hearing via video-conferencing from somewhere in Europe, to come home to face the complaints against her.

Related story: https://tribune.net.ph/2024/02/13/come-home-face-the-charges