CEBU CITY — “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?,“ Jeremiah snapped when confronted by thugs of his day who posed do-gooders. ”Can the leopard change his spots?”
Panfilo Lacson surfaced, after going AWOL (“absent without leave”) for over 14 months. Since then, the senator has been busy trying to prove the prophet was all wet.
In a less-than-brilliant decision, penned by Justice Ramon Bato, Jr, the Court of Appeals quashed a Manila Regional Trial Court warrant for Lacson’s arrest . He was linked in to the murder of publicist Salvador Dacer and driver Emmanuel Corbito.
Dacer was to brief ex-President Fidel Ramos on the “Best World” scam that made President Joseph Estrada and cronies squirm.. Dacer never made it.
Two Cavite farmers testified they saw agents from the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, then headed by Lacson, “strangle Dacer and driver with an electrical cord… Their bodies were burned on a gasoline drenched fire in Indang,”
“Over my dead body.” Lacson bristled when counseled to face trial. He skipped town on January 5,2010 —- tipped off that Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 18 judge Myra Garcia Fernandez was set to order his arrest.
Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, at the time, refused to exercise “plenary power” by ordering a reinvestigation. The ball is with the courts, she rightly said. “We know where De Lima is coming from,” Lacson scoffed.
Can a senator pick which judicial process to comply with or ignore? griped Carina Dacer, daughter of the murdered PR man… Lacson pledged to tell Dacer siblings all he knew about the rubout. “That never happened,” she told Radyo Inquirer.
Thus, Carina, Sabina, Amparo and Emily filed a $20 million civil suit against Lacson, deposed President Joseph Estrada, and four others before a U.S. District Court in California for salvaging of their father.
For over a decade now, justice has been denied to Dacer’s daughters. They will appeal the CA ruling. Lacson, meanwhile, shrugs off leading NBI posses on a wild goose chase.
Since then, Lacson has been busy trying to refurbished his credentials: from fugitive to his once touted “crime-buster” image. He has, for example, hinted that he is probing customs hanky-panky. He will make the exposes in due time.
Can a fugitive remould himself into crime buster? Will he be credible? “Can a man step into the same river twice?” the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus asked. Can Panfilo Lacson “make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?”
Don’t ask Senator Jinggoy Estrada. In 2009, Estrada delivered a series of privileged speeches. Among other charges, he claimed Lacson had Dacer and driver murdered, JHe quoted Dacer telling his children: “If anything happens to me, Lacson is responsible”.
Jinggoy pinned on Lacson the Kuratong Baleleng massacre and other rubouts. Other rubs- a Western Manila police officer, “Red Scorpion: gang relatives, a 20-year-old woman and an eight-year-old girl dumped from a helicopter into waters off Corregidor Island.
Lacson’s reply followed the “look-who’s-calling-the-kettle-black” groove.” Lacson claimed Erap creamed jueteng payoffs, monthly P5million baksheesh for PNP chiefs.. PLDT shares from industrialist Alfonso Yuchengco to favor Manny Pangilinan, coddled smugglers, etc. etc.
“Both camps have the goods on each other”, observed Inquirer columnist Solita Collas-Monsod. “And why not?. They were together for so long,” With signature candor, the professor-economist added: “They were “a crooked duo”.
“ As the sapling is bent, so will the tree grow”.
Look at how Lacson, as a young PMA Class ‘71 graduate. developed. “Under martial law, torture became an instrument of power,” Alfred McCoy writes in “Closer Than Brothers” (Yale University) Between 1975 and 1985, some 737 Filipinos “disappeared’ But nearly four times that number —some 2,520, equivalent to 77 percent of all victims were salvaged.
Lieutenant (later senator, now fugitive) Panfilo Lacson thrived in that milieu. He rose through ranks of the notorious Military Intelligence Security Group, “on a fast track to national police power”.
Today, ex-fugitive Lacson is a member of the Commission on Appointments. Has he become a statesman? Or will his past overwhelm his present. He will get back at Justice Secretary de Lima when she goes through the confirmation process, many fret.
“I’m preparing all questions,” Lacson said in Filipino to reporters. There will be a lot,” “What we are trying to find out here is if they are qualified or competent. One may be qualified but not competent but of course if you’re not qualified then most likely you’re not competent.”
Secretary de Lima is known for probity and integrity. How her confirmation process turns out will tell us about institutional strengths or brittleness. We will also learn if “Ethiopians can change their skins or leopards lose their spots”.