MANILA, Philippines - Sen. Panfilo Lacson said the Arroyo administration “has gone berserk” in its effort to implicate him in the murders of Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito and argued that the affidavit of the publicist’s US-based daughters linking him to the crime was invalid.
“This administration has gone berserk. They should at least give due respect and regard to the legal procedure,” Lacson said.
“The Dacer daughters and Mancao are not here to personally swear and attest to the truthfulness of their affidavits before the prosecutor, and yet they have prematurely announced a formal filing of a criminal complaint against me,” he said.
Dacer sisters Carina, Sabina, Emily and Amparo said in an affidavit filed with the Department of Justice on Friday that Lacson “ordered the killing” of their father.
They said their affidavit was based on claims made in another affidavit by former police senior superintendent Cezar Mancao II that he heard Lacson order the killing of Dacer.
Lacson said the Dacers’ and even Mancao’s affidavits are invalid until personally sworn and attested to before a prosecutor.
“It has therefore become obvious that they are engaged in persecution rather than prosecution under the rule of law,” he said.
Lacson said the procedures being allowed by the DOJ are illegal and that they have not escaped the attention of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile who advised him to be ready to go to the higher courts to protect his rights.
Lacson said the Dacer sisters and Mancao were themselves victims of what he considers twisted legal procedures.
Lacson lamented that even before Dacer’s daughters used Mancao’s affidavit as basis for their complaint, it had already made the rounds in the media and was used in the alleged smear drive against him.
Lacson said his lawyers had also told him that the DOJ was violating legal procedures.
“If they will force it, (Enrile) told me to be ready to go to the Court of Appeals or even the Supreme Court to question these illegal procedures,” Lacson said over radio station dwIZ.
He noted the filing of the complaint was done on a Friday, apparently to give him little opportunity to defend himself through the media.
Lacson also said the charges against him were being announced on a piecemeal basis and that his detractors were apparently deriving pleasure from this kind of “torture.”
He said his informers at the Palace had told him of Malacañang’s order for some zealous administration officials to go full blast in destroying his credibility.
Lacson said he found it strange that although the investigation into the case began in 2001, it was only recently or roughly a year before the 2010 elections that the government worked for Mancao’s extradition.
He maintained that he had nothing to do with the twin murders and dismissed the attacks against him as a “public relations” job.
Lacson said the alleged claims of Mancao would not stand in court because in his affidavit he only heard Lacson order the hit on Dacer.
“That is not sufficient. There must be corroboration. We cannot take Mancao’s statements hook, line and sinker,” Lacson said.
He added that Mancao had even claimed to have been pressured by former Presidential Security Group commander Romeo Prestoza to implicate him (Lacson).
Lacson said he had no motive to kill Dacer even as some people were speculating that he had resented the publicist’s opposition to his appointment as chief of the Philippine National Police during the time of former President Joseph Estrada.
Lacson said it was also not enough for the Dacer sisters to pin him down just because their father allegedly confided Lacson’s possible plan to have him killed.
Lacson said the family of Dacer was misguided and that the government was following a “wrong script” that “defies logic.”
“There is no point in all of these. It doesn’t make sense to me. I am just relying on the truth that I have nothing to do with this,” he said.
Lacson said the Senate was willing to give him legal assistance.
“This administration is just really hot on me and is out to silence me,” Lacson said.
Earlier, Lacson said that while he respects the right of the Dacer family to find justice, they might be committing a more serious injustice with their latest action.
Sen. Jamby Madrigal, an ally of Lacson, expressed support for her colleague, saying the way Lacson was being charged smacked of political persecution.
“There must be proof before anyone can file a case against anyone and the big question is, why only now?” Madrigal said.
Kuratong Baleleng case reopening
Mancao might be used to testify in the unresolved Kuratong Baleleng rubout case in 1995, Ricardo Diaz, chief of the National Bureau of Investigation Anti-Terrorism Division, said.
Diaz said the personalities involved in the Dacer-Corbito murders and the Kuratong Baleleng rubout case are the same.
Lacson was head of Task Force Habagat of the defunct Presidential Anti-Crime Commission, whose men figured in the alleged rubout of 11 members of the Kuratong Baleleng gang in May 1995.
Criminal charges were filed with a Quezon City court in the same year against the suspects in the killings, including Lacson, Mancao and Aquino.
The Kuratong Baleleng was originally an anti-communist group that degenerated into a robbery and kidnap-for-ransom syndicate allegedly under police protection.
Its alleged falling out with its police protectors led to the rubout, some quarters say. – With Sandy Araneta