MANILA, Philippines ? Sen. Panfilo Lacson said Saturday the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had gone berserk in its persecution of him, after the daughters of slain publicist Salvador ?Bubby? Dacer formally accused him of ordering the killing of their father in November 2000.
?This administration has gone berserk,? Lacson, who was chief of the national police and of a special anti-crime task force in 2001, said in a statement. ?They should at least give due respect and regard to legal procedure.?
He said the Dacer daughters and former police senior superintendent Cezar Mancao II were not in the Philippines to swear personally to the truthfulness of their affidavits before a prosecutor and yet they announced the formal filing of a criminal complaint against him in the United States.
The Dacer daughters based their complaint on a sworn statement executed by Mancao on Feb. 14 in the US. In it, Mancao alleged Lacson had ordered Dacer killed. Dacer?s driver Emmanuel Corbito was killed along with him.
The daughters also said Lacson had a motive for wanting their father dead. Dacer had purportedly opposed Lacson?s appointment as Philippine National Police chief under then-president Joseph Estrada, they said.
In a phone interview Saturday, Lacson said he had no axe to grind against Dacer.
?I did not even know that Dacer opposed my appointment until his daughter started talking about it,? he said.
He said Estrada?s son Jinggoy, then-secretary of the interior Ronaldo Puno, the late Reynaldo Wycoco who was head of the National Bureau of Investigation, and other close friends of Estrada?s ?were actively lobbying against my appointment, but I did not know about Dacer.?
?And I got appointed anyway on Nov. 16, 1999, so what?s the point? No, I would not have any motive whatsoever against Bubby Dacer,? Lacson said.
In an interview on radio dwIZ, Lacson said ?friends in Malacańang? had told him the instruction given three weeks ago was ?to go full-blast? against him.
He said the instruction was ??sirain at wasakin ang credibility niya?? [ruin and destroy his credibility]. He refused to reveal his sources.
Lacson was reached by phone while in Baguio City for a speaking engagement.
He said the Arroyo administration had thrown everything at him, save for the proverbial kitchen sink.
He said he had been accused of involvement in illegal drugs, kidnapping and killings.
?And they even say that I?m gay. To silence me? they think they need to implicate me? in the Dacer murder case, he said. With editing by INQUIRER.net
