Lascañas set to testify in the Senate

Retired SPO3 Arturo Lascañas appears before the media and admitted the existence of the Davao Death Squad at a press conference at the Senate on Monday, February 20, 2017.
INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

Retired SPO3 Arturo Lascañas is looking forward to finally putting on record his public confession about President Rodrigo Duterte’s alleged involvement in the vigilante group known as the Davao Death Squad when he testifies in the Senate on Monday.

In a phone interview on Sunday, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV said he met with the former Davao City policeman last Wednesday to give him a copy of the invitation extended to him by the Senate committee on public order and dangerous drugs for today’s hearing.

“All eyes will be on Lascañas,” Trillanes told the Inquirer, adding that the retired policeman is expected to be the hearing’s main focus since he would be providing more details apart from those stated in his affidavit.

Committee chair Sen. Panfilo Lascon earlier said he would also call the former Davao City police chief as well as Commission on Human Rights officials to testify.

Trillanes said Lascañas was buoyed by the fact that he has the “full support” of his family.

“He believes this is a spiritual act to cleanse himself, it’s an atonement of some sort … He is at ease in what he is about to do,” Trillanes said of Lascañas.

Asked whether there may be last-minute surprises that could stop Lascañas from testifying in the Senate, he said anything could happen.

Trillanes said senators could test Lascañas to see if he was consistent in his testimony. At the same time, the public would see if senators were “lawyering for the President.”

He said the assumption was that senators opposed to Lascañas appearing at the Senate may take part in the hearing and try to find holes in the latter’s testimony.

“They will try to destroy his credibility in short,” Trillanes said.

But he said that no senator could influence what would happen during the hearing except Lascañas.

Meanwhile, presidential chief legal counsel Salvador Panelo dismissed as a “fabrication” the journal written by Lascañas, saying it was not presented at the first opportunity and thus, was an “afterthought.”

In a statement, Panelo also belittled the capability of Lascañas to express himself in a literary manner.

“Moreover, the contents of the journal speak for themselves, obviously written by a lawyer with a penchant for literary prose, and certainly not by an ordinary police sergeant who cannot understand the words like ‘Waterloo,’ ‘presidential derby,’ ‘telecommunication’ and Divine-something? It was not,” Panelo said.

But Trilanes scoffed at those deriding Lascañas for his literary prowess, saying that the retired policeman had taken up higher studies and even studied to be a lawyer. Lascañas was able to reach four years of law studies but was not able to complete the last year.

Trillanes said that if seen in its entirety, the journal was “not perfectly written” but there were “moments” that Lascañas would disclose the depth of his feelings.

“It was just written by somebody disclosing his secrets in life,” the senator said.