Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson and former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo have buried the hatchet after years of acrimony with the latter’s expression of regret in her new memoir that he “became an enemy instead of an ally” because of unfounded accusations.
Lacson said he had forgiven the former president “a long time ago” and praised her “decency and courage” to admit having wronged him.
“For nine long years, under her regime, all I had been hoping and praying for was to get back my dignity and honor,” he said on Twitter late on Thursday.
“To [Arroyo’s] credit, she has the decency and courage to admit that she publicly and unjustly accused me of various crimes based on false information. Whatever, I [had] already forgiven her a long time ago,” Lacson said.
In 2001, Lacson was accused of keeping multimillion-dollar offshore accounts supposedly containing money collected from criminal activities when he was the national police chief under former President Joseph Estrada.
Though she didn’t apologize in her book “Deus Ex Machina,” Arroyo acknowledged that she might have wronged Lacson by believing information from the former whistleblower known as Angelo “Ador” Mawanay, or Antonio Luis Marquez.
Marquez later recanted. Former top intelligence officer Victor Corpus also apologized to Lacson.
In her account, Arroyo admitted that the episode was one example of how truth would often fall by the wayside “during those toxic times of intrigue, allegations in affidavits and counterallegations in counteraffidavits, dirty tricks, cell-phone monitoring, and spying and whatnot.”