But what does the New Minister think of the allegations of nepotism and family enrichment leveled against his party colleague? He acknowledged that the optics aren't good and said that if there is something corrupt that needs to be revealed, well, let the audit reveal it in the name of transparency.
Julius Espat, Minister of Home Affairs
"What I've seen is what you have put on the TV to be honest, so I haven't really delved into it in detail. I spoke to Minister Mira bout half hour ago and he was in fairly good spirits and he's responsive to letting the audit do its job and he believes that everything has been done above the board. I don't have much more to say to him except to tell him he's a colleague of mine and I hope that he can do the best to participate in the audit and to make sure that his name is cleared, that's all you can hope for. But as I told you the last time, we will get more information tomorrow and we will see how to move from there. The optics is a difficult one to justify no doubt, you've been pretty good at zooming into the details so if the information is there then what can one do? It's best to have the authorities deal with it if it has to be done that way."
Jules Vasquez:
"But as a champion of probity in public life what you saw those hundreds of payments all hugging the threshold, it had to make your brown eyes blue."
Julius Espat, Minister of Home Affairs
"I don't think that was necessary meaning that I saw some that were done under contracts and it went through so I saw where the need was but the optics of the nepotism is what you see, what everybody sees apart from the way it was done, the end result is the same, family members benefitting so people will look at it in a different way but there's no way to try and justify it, that's why I said you can't put it under the rug, let's look at it, let's analyze and let's be transparent about it. I think you have dug up enough to have the transparency be there."
