MANILA, Philippines - Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said Wednesday that he is willing to bend the upper chamber's rules to give Senator Manny Villar a chance to defend himself before fellow senators from allegations that his transactions involving the C-5 road project were unethical.

"I will give him all the leeway to present his defense and to be questioned by his peers. If he wants to come this afternoon, I will bend the rules. I will ask my companions to bend the rules for him," Enrile told ANC's News@8.

He said the Senate is poised to vote on Committee Report No. 780, which proposes censure of Villar for failing to declare a conflict of interest in the C-5 road project.

Enrile said members of the majority will close its interpellation on Wednesday at 3 p.m.. The voting will start right after Villar's allies' interpellation of the committee report.

The senator said he has prepared for an overnight session because he was provided with information that Villar's allies are planning to prolong the proceedings and so that the "promulgation" of the ethics case would be passed on to the next Congress.

Wednesday is the Senate's last day of session. Senators will go on recess for the campaign period only to convene after the elections to canvass the presidential and vice-presidential poll results.

Enrile said he has also heard rumors that "there will be a filibuster" from Villar's camp to try to prolong the proceedings or that minority senators would boycott the session.

"I would like to believe that the members of the Villar group are sensible, rational and responsible senators. I don't believe the rumors that I’m hearing, but I'm prepared for that," he said.

Stands by committee report

In a privilege speech on Tuesday afternoon, Villar denied allegations that he illegally benefitted from the road project. He also denied that he was a member of the bicameral conference that approved the 2008 national budget, which allegedly contained a double insertion for the C-5 road project budget.

He accused his opponents in the 2010 presidential elections, including senator-members of the Liberal Party, of railroading the hearings.

Villar, however, did not wait to be interpellated by his colleagues and immediately left the Senate plenary session.

Enrile said that despite Villar's long speech, it still lacked explanations regarding his alleged failure to declare conflict of interest in the road project.

"Unfortunately, he did not wish to be questioned. The test of the proof of his assertions would be the ability of those assertions to stand scrutiny of his peers, but he missed that chance to be tested by questions coming from the members of the Senate," the veteran lawmaker said.

He added that he is ready to defend his committee report to anybody who wants to question it.

"I'm ready to answer questions from anybody -- the public, media, members of the Senate, members of the academe, from every sector -- about the contents of the report. I want to be shown where I made any error of judgement, any mistakes in the appreciation of the evidence," Enrile said.

He said that he is confident that he made the right decision, proposing a censure against Villar, as he is an experienced lawyer who has learned "to sift through falsehood from truth."

Unparliamentary

Villar's speech and walkout sparked a debate among members of his enemies and allies at the Senate.

Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, Villar's No. 1 defender, had a brief skirmish with Sen. Maria Consuelo "Jamby" Madrigal, who filed the ethics case against the Nacionalista Party's presidential candidate.

Cayetano admitted during an interview with ABS-CBN's Umagang Kay Ganda that the exchange of words that transpired after Villar's speech was unparliamentary, and apologized for it.

"I have to apologize, but [all the senators] are equally guilty. In our rules, Section 93, acts and languages which offend a senator or any public institution shall be deemed unparliamentary," Cayetano said. "I think the Senate as a whole owes an apology."

He said that he has been trying to prevent himself from acting improper during sessions, but since he is only human, he could not help but react to offensive statements coming from other members of the Senate.

Cayetano said that he and other members of Villar's camp had been expected these confrontations ever since the Senate, acting as the committee of the whole, bended the rules and decided to hear the ethics case in public.

"No senator, in any circumstance, shall use offensive or improper language against any other senator, but we have predicted that this will happen since the ethics case was brought up, especially that the rules have been circumvented. This is why ethics case hearings were confidential. This was the first one that was done in public," the senator said.

He said the hearings were done in public to besmirch Villar's reputation.