Dayan-Kerwin face-off expected Dec. 5 at Senate

Ronnie Dayan and Alleged drug lord turned witness Kerwin Espinosa. INQUIRER PHOTOS

Two key witnesses who have implicated Senator Leila de Lima in illegal drugs will face each other at a Senate hearing on December 5 to “resolve (the) inconsistencies” in their testimonies, Senator Panfilo Lacson said on Monday.

Lacson was referring to De Lima’s former driver, Ronnie Dayan, and suspected drug lord Kerwin Espinosa, son of slain Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr.

The two, along with other policemen allegedly involved in illegal drugs, will be among the resource persons invited at the resumption of the hearing of the Senate committee on public order and dangerous drugs, which Lacson chairs, on the November 5 killing of the mayor while inside his cell at Baybay, Leyte provincial jail.

Lacson said Kerwin, who has already testified before the committee, will be summoned again to the committee, while Dayan, who also testified in a separate hearing of the House of Representatives on the alleged proliferation of illegal drugs at the New Bilibid Prison, will face the Senate for the first time.

Kerwin and Dayan both implicated De Lima in the illegal drug trade while she was still Justice Secretary.

Lacson said the two witnesses had to resolve the discrepancies in their testimonies, among them the dates of their supposed meetings with De Lima and the person who allegedly acted as the link between Dayan and Kerwin.

In an interview at the Senate, Lacson said he was optimistic that the discrepancies will be resolved, adding that Dayan has probably realized that the year was 2015 and not 2014.

“I’m also inviting somebody from police regional office CAR to testify on the logbook [at the] hotel [where] Kerwin [stayed]. [It was] November 2015,” Lacson said.

In his testimony before the committee, Kerwin claimed that he delivered money to Dayan and met De Lima at Burnham Park in Baguio City in November 2015. But Dayan told the House hearing that it took place in 2014.

Kerwin also claimed that it was Albuera police director Chief Insp. Jovie Espinido who introduced him to Dayan but the latter denied knowing the police official.

Lacson said he received advance information from Camp Crame, where Kerwin is being detained, that the latter was “rethinking” his testimony.

The senator said “there’s advance information from Camp Crame this morning” that Kerwin was apparently having second thoughts about having said that Espinido was the one who introduced him to De Lima’s driver-bodyguard.

Lacson said the hearing would be issue-based and would not delve on personal issues.

But he admitted that the inquiry might tackle personal matters to clear up certain issues.

Still, Lacson assured that it will not “reach a climax…we will not go that far.”

De Lima and Dayan admitted that they had a seven-year affair./ac/rga