It is insane to allow the Senate Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs to proceed with its investigation into the claims of retired police official Arturo Lascañas. He said President Rodrigo Duterte had ordered the killing of criminals and the bombing of a mosque in Davao City while mayor.
This has never before happened in the illustrious history of our Senate. While Senate President pro-tempore Franklin Drilon, Benigno Aquino IV, Leila de Lima, Francis Escudero, Risa Honteveros, Ralph Recto, Francis Pangilinan, Joel Villanueva, Sonny Angara and Antonio Trillanes have their interest in wanting to confirm the involvement of the President, the decision of the Senate reminds us that we elected crackpots who disguise themselves as honorable. Allowing the testimony made by a self-confessed serial killer is a complete mockery of the legislative hearing.
The conduct of the 10 senators to allow Lascañas to narrate his lies is an insult to these hypocrites who are rather quick in asserting that their duty is to seek the “truth.” It was most stupid, because instead of advising their witness to face the necessary criminal charges, the 10 senators opted to allow their mad dog to use the forum to make a mockery of the intelligence of the Filipino people.
The senators, who all belong to the Liberal Party, know that their witness would only make a litany of their prevarications against the President. Their motive was to grandstand, conscious that our local peddlers of fake news would swallow them hook, line and sinker.
Yes, a lying serial killer has the right to narrate the crimes he committed, including his right to name his accomplices, but that should come as his defense if charges had already been filed against him. What these self-confessed serial killers (Matobato and Lascañas) brought by Senators De Lima and Trillanes did is an admission against self-interest. Nonetheless, they still have to prove in court the crimes they committed to validly implicate persons they want to drag with them to hell. An investigation such as this can never proceed because it seems to be pointing the blame on others, and not in proving the crimes they openly admitted to have committed.
But looking at it, the 10 loonies in the Senate appear to be more interested in investigating the President. They surmise they could collaterally implicate the President in the string of liquidation cases without him being charged and summoned in court. As lawyers, they should have known it that they cannot allow their quislings to freely open their mouth as if to narrate a fiction story. The senators cannot even say their testimony is in aid of legislation vital to provide solution to a legislative problem.
These loonies in the Senate should have urged their new witness to testify about the existence of the so-called Davao Death Squad (DDS) as narrated first by another self-confessed murderer by the name of Edgar Matobato. But how could that be when no charge has been filed against him? Despite that, senators Trillanes and De Lima purposely failed to file criminal charges against him so that a warrant of arrest could be issued, and use his testimony to point at the President as the one who ordered him to kill alleged targets.
But as it is, the two mad dogs, Matobato and Lascañas, cannot qualify as state witnesses to be placed under the witness protection plan. No charges have been filed against them. There has never been any claim that their lives are in danger. It was they who created their own predicament—definitely, people they implicated will not sit idly after hearing their admissions.
The decision of Senator Richard Gordon to discontinue the committee investigation is right. He does not want his committee turned into a circus by self-confessed murderers. The 10 loonies are purposely seeking to disregard the proper venue that could hear their allegations.
What is clear is that Senators De Lima and Trillanes are coddling them because of their political value in discrediting the President. Even if their sole objective is to destroy the credibility of President Duterte, there are rules that guide all of us on how to present our gripes against the President. If this disgraceful retired member of the police force is truly determined to bring out the crimes he committed upon orders of the President, the senators, particularly Trillanes and De Lima, should have asked him if he is prepared to be charged in court. Such is a legitimate because it is a precondition to validate his allegations in implicating the President as the so-called “brains.”
To recall, their coach, Senator Trillanes, was jailed for more than five years for that botched munity of his so-called Magdalo soldiers. It was his alliance with the corrupt Noynoy Aquino government that saved the day for him. This is the same Trillanes who has been maligning the President by his presentation of fake bank records to allegedly expose the so-called bank accounts of the President in a privilege speech he made in the Senate.
However, before closing, he made a clown of himself. He demanded that President Duterte admit to said bank accounts. Common sense tells us that if truly he had with him the records of the bank, he should have distributed copies of them to his colleagues so they could initiate the proper impeachment proceedings in the House. Alas, instead of doing so, he challenged the President to confirm his alleged exposé entertaining the thought that the President is stupid like him.
In the case of Senator De Lima, she remains arrogant and defiant, hallucinating that she now stands as martyr after being exposed of having liaison with her driver who took advantage of their cozy relationship to serve as courier between her and the drug lords. This uncanny relationship between De Lima and the drug lords happened while she was the secretary of Justice and the drug lords were serving their sentence at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa.
In the end, it is these miserable members of the Senate that are the ones pelting the Senate with their own excrement. Their desecration of the institution is most unparalleled and nauseating.
rpkapunan@gmail.com
