Senator Panfilo Lacson will participate in the congressional investigation of the Senate justice committee led by Senator Leila de Lima into the drug-related killings plaguing the country in the past few weeks.
Lacson heads the Senate committee on public order and illegal drugs will serve as a secondary committee to de Lima’s committee in the investigations.
Lacson said in a radio interview with dzBB that his approach on the investigations will have a different angle, coming from the viewpoint of a former PNP chief. He was national head of the PNP from 1999 to 2001 before being elected to the Senate.
“Magpa-participate pa rin [ako] para rin talagang, sabi ko nga kanina, iba ang pinanggagalingan namin [ni De Lima]. (I will still participate because, as I have said a while ago, Senator De Lima and I come from different backgrounds).”
Thus, Lacson will take part in the Senate committee headed by De Lima by attending its hearings.
“Not necessarily mag-aaway kami doon pero pwede kaming magsagawa ng pagdinig na iba ang pinanggagalingan ko at iba ang pinanggagalingan niya para mas malawak ang investigation na mangyari,” (Not that we’re going to argue there, but we can do the hearings in a way that we will both be coming from different angles and with different perspectives, thereby making the investigation broader in scope), he reasoned.
[ads1]
De Lima was once Justice Secretary and head of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) starting from 2008 to 2010. However, some critics blame the worsened drugs trade right inside Bilid Prison on her because it was in her time when it happened.
The Senate justice committee, of which De Lima is chair, will serve as the primary investigative committee tasked to look into the recent spate of drug-related killings, some of which are suspected to be summary executions allegedly by the police.
The investigations by De Lima and Lacson’s Senate committees are expected to start this month of August, Lacson said.
In the hearings, Lacson plans to question PNP resource persons how the PNP investigation on the killings is being conducted. Some reports have it that some of the casualties were actually innocent salvage victims.
“Isa yan sa tatanungin ko, ilan ang napatay hindi ng pulis, at ano ang progress sa investigation sa napatay na yan. Ilan ang established or validated na drug lords, pushers o users? (That would be among my questions—how many killings were not linked to the police and what’s the progress of the investigation on those killings. How many of those killed have been established or validated to be drug lords, pushers or users?)” he said.
However, Lacson expressed reservations on inviting PNP top brass for questioning—like PNP chief Ronald Dela Rosa. The justice department and the CHR could very well look into the said killings themselves, Lacson said. No need to invite top officials.
For instance, in the alleged Pasay summary killing inside a jail that left a father and his son dead, “bakit si Bato ipapatawag mo doon? (why call Bato [General Dela Rosa] for questioning about it?)” Lacson asked. He reasoned that the CHR and DOJ can directly question the cops directly involved in the case.
The probe on the drug-related killings came after de Lima filed Resolution No. 9, seeking to investigate the “recent rampant extrajudicial killings and summary executions of suspected criminals to strengthen the mechanisms of accountability of law enforcers and to institute corrective legislative measures to ensure full respect of basic human rights, especially the right to life.”
Sources: (gmanetwork.com, philstar.com)
[ads3]
