Pubdate: Tue, 04 Jun 2002
Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer (Philippines)
Copyright: 2002 Philippine Daily Inquirer
Contact:  http://www.inquirer.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1073
Author: Rocky Nazareno

CHARGE LACSON, 3 SENATE COMMITTEES RECOMMEND

MINUTES before the opposition bloc claimed to have taken control of the 
Senate on Monday, the chairpersons of three Senate committees released a 
joint report recommending the filing of kidnap-for-ransom and 
drug-trafficking charges against Senator Panfilo Lacson.

The committees on public order and illegal drugs under Senator Robert 
Barbers, on national defense and security under Senator Ramon Magsaysay 
Jr., and the blue ribbon committee under Senator Joker Arroyo also 
recommended that criminal charges be filed against Lacson's men in the 
disbanded Presidential Anti-Organized-Crime Task Force (PAOCTF).

Committee Report No. 66 said the Department of Justice should pursue an 
investigation of Lacson's possible participation, together with police 
superintendents Reynaldo Acop, John Campos and Francisco Villaroman, in the 
kidnapping of six Chinese nationals and for drug trafficking.

The kidnapping " ... has been substantially established by prima facie 
evidence," it said.

Lacson was quick to dismiss the report as "a mere draft and, therefore, a 
malicious gossip."

He noted that only those who belonged to the "former majority" signed the 
report. "And to attribute (the report to the Senate reorganization Monday) 
makes it doubly malicious," he said. "They are just sour-graping."

The committees headed by Arroyo, Barbers, and Magsaysay had conducted an 
inquiry into the alleged kidnapping and drug trafficking activities of 
Lacson when he was head of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the PAOCTF.

Barbers said the opposition moved for the reorganization of the Senate to 
prevent the release of the committee report.

"That report has been finished and finalized. So that is why they had to 
make their move to reorganize," Barbers said.

Copies of the report were spirited out of the office of Senate President 
Franklin Drilon just when it looked like that the Senate impasse would not 
be resolved.

"With that coup, if the committee chairs are changed, then the Lacson 
report will not be released," Arroyo said. "It was a pre-emptive strike."

The report said Lacson and his men should be investigated for their 
complicity in the abduction of Chiong Hiu Mong, Wong Kam Chong, spouses 
Zeng Jia Xuan and Hong Zhen Quiao, their nephew Zeng Kang Fang, and driver 
James Ong.

"General Lacson, while in the police service, was accountable for neglect 
of duty under the doctrine of command responsibility," it said.

It noted that the "PAOCTF miserably failed in its mission, yet it was the 
agency specially organized, specially tasked, specially funded and 
specially empowered to counter-act organized drug cartels."

Lacson could be held liable for violation of the PNP Code of Professional 
Conduct and the Code of Conduct of Public Officials, the report said.

It took Lacson to task for endorsing the Chinese embassy's request for the 
investigation of the abduction of a Chinese national to Villaroman when the 
latter was himself named one of the abductors of Wong Kam Chong.

"To state that the solution to the drug menace will require the national 
leadership to demonstrate its political will by taking drastic action, 
letting the chips fall where they may, is to say the obvious," the report said.

It also noted that "the statistics on the status of the drug problem 
parlayed during the hearings are frightening."

"The situation is even made more gloomy by the evidence establishing the 
involvement in the drug trade and drug-related organized crimes of the top 
echelon mandated to suppress them," it added.

Aside from Barbers, Magsaysay and Arroyo, senators Renato Cayetano, Juan 
Flavier, Francis Pangilinan, Loren Legarda-Leviste, Manuel Villar, Noli de 
Castro and Ralph Recto signed the joint committee report. All are 
administration allies.

New Senate majority floor leader Aquilino Pimentel chided Barbers, 
Magsaysay and Arroyo for releasing the draft report without giving the 
former minority members the chance to read it.

"I, myself, saw my name in the report yet I have yet to read it," Pimentel 
said.
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MAP posted-by: Beth