SEN. Panfilo Lacson is worried many lawmakers may be jailed if Janet Lim-Napoles, the suspected brains behind the P10-billion pork barrel scam, is made a state witness.
“My worry is when Mrs. Napoles starts pointing fingers, the quorum in Congress may be transferred to Camp Crame. We may do the roll call there,” he said.
Majority of our lawmakers in jail? Would that be their place in the sun?
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Lacson said Napoles, through her husband and son, had shared with him her list of people she had transacted business with in misusing pork barrel funds.
He said some people on Napoles’ list were not indicted during then President Noynoy Aquino’s administration. “I would just be quiet about who are those who got away or not,” he said.
Let’s hope Napoles would name them. But would she not be as selective as the previous administration?
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Napoles was serving a 40-year jail term after a Makati City Regional Trial Court (RTC) convicted her on April 14, 2015, of illegally detaining pork barrel scam state witness Benhur Luy for four months in 2013.
But the Court of Appeals nullified her conviction, saying there is no evidence she was behind Luy’s detention in a retreat house in a posh subdivision in Makati City.
Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said she could be a credible key witness in the pork barrel scam cases. Would the alleged pork barrel scam mastermind metamorphose into a state witness?
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Aguirre said the government will re-open the pork barrel scam probe because the previous administration exercised “selective justice,” punishing a few and letting many other persons equally guilty of the racket get off the hook.
Aguirre said hundreds of persons appear to be responsible for the multi-billion peso pork barrel racket.
This time, there wouldn’t be selective justice. But it would largely depend on who would Napoles point to, if she becomes a state witness.