Elenita Binay and the controversies that have hounded her family

Elenita Sombillo Binay is no stranger to controversy.

After all, her husband, Vice President Jejomar Binay, and her son, former Makati Mayor Junjun Binay, were the subjects of a Senate corruption investigation that lasted more than a year.

Last year, Elenita finally broke her silence and spoke to the media.

“As a family, we're very sad. Especially kung iyong mismong mga kaibigan mo, iyong mga tinuring ng VP na kapatid, siya na iyong saying something na hindi maganda. Pero at the end of day, andiyan si Lord,” she said in September 2015.

She was referring to former Makati Vice Mayor Ernesto Mercado who was one of the Senate’s witnesses against the Binays.

But on Thursday's Kabiyak report by JP Soriano on GMA-7’s “24 Oras,”  it showed just how she has endured more than just that investigation.

Elenita is from Angat, Bulacan who finished her degree in medicine at Manila Central University in 1968. She then became a resident physician at Dr. Jose Reyes Medical Center, where she met her future husband — young lawyer Jojo.

The couple married after the Martial Law and had five children, two of whom became members of the Congress and one the local chief executive of Makati City.

Elenita also served in government from 1998 to 2001 as the mayor of Makati City after her husband served three terms.

But this three-year government service yielded eight cases of graft and malversation filed at the Sandiganbayan beginning 2006. The anti-graft court junked one of the cases, while the seven others are still ongoing.

Three of the cases involved the questionable bidding of furniture and office partitions for the new Makati City Hall building when she was the mayor. Four other cases stemmed from alleged irregularities in purchasing medical equipment for Ospital ng Makati that included submission of fake documents.

Elenita did not grant GMA News an interview, but Binay’s camp sent a statement questioning why the Office of the Ombudsman is bringing up an old and dismissed case against her. 

“The lawyer of Mrs. Elenita S. Binay has assailed the Office of the Ombudsman for resurrecting a case dismissed by the previous Ombudsman six years ago and adding two complaints, one of which is based on an alleged incident that happened 15 years ago,” the statement read.

When Binay ran for vice president in the 2010 elections, the controversies went beyond politics. Elenita was slapped with photos of her husband with another woman. Binay then explained that they had already hurdled that problem, long before the photos surfaced. Elenita remained unfazed then.

In the end, her marriage with Binay endured—through thick and thin. Will she be the next First Lady of the Philippines? The people will decide on May 9. For now, she is busy with charitable works, her children said. —Trisha Macas/JST, GMA News