Anti-crime group wants fugitive Lacson impeached

An anti-crime group said on Wednesday that it is studying the possibility of filing impeachment and ethics complaints against Senator Panfilo Lacson, who went into hiding a month before a court issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with the Dacer-Corbito double murder case. The group Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) said in a forum on Wednesday that it plans to write Congress in the coming weeks to ask for some form of “disciplinary action" against the fugitive senator. “Sa amin pong nakikita ay (kailangang) pag-aralan na ang impeachment laban sa kanya (In our view, there’s a need to study possible impeachment against him)… VACC will be writing the Senate and the House of Representatives to initiate something sort of a disciplinary action and leading perhaps to impeachment," VACC chairman Dante Jimenez said in an interview aired over GMA News’ “24 Oras." Senators cannot be impeached Two senators, however, clarified that both impeachment and ethics complaint that VACC plans to file against Lacson have no legal basis. Senator Francis Escudero said that based on the 1987 Constitution, senators are not among the officials who can be removed from office through impeachment. “Hindi isa (ang mga senador) sa mga impeachable officers na nakasaad sa Saligang-batas. Sa katunayan, Senado nga magta-try ng anumang impeachment case," he said. (Senators are not among the impeachable officers listed in the Constitution. In fact, it is the Senate that is tasked to try any impeachment case.) Escudero cited Article 11, Section 2 of the 1987 Constitution, which states that only “the President, the Vice-President, the members of the Supreme Court, the members of the Constitutional Commissions, and the Ombudsman may be removed from office" through impeachment. Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile meanwhile said that an ethics complaint against Lacson may not prosper since the fugitive senator “has not done anything to destroy the image of the Senate." Enrile explained that a senator can only be removed from office if majority of his colleagues vote to unseat him based on recommendations from the ethics committee, or if he or she has a final conviction on a case from the Supreme Court. Mancao lawyer hits ‘Senate inaction’ Lawyer Ferdinand Topacio, counsel for former police officer Cezar Mancao II, meanwhile criticized the Senate’s inaction towards Lacson. “Si Senator Lacson, mayroon nang (In Senator Lacson’s case, there’s already) information filed against him in court. A warrant of arrest has already been issued against him. There is no reason I can think of kung bakit hindi inaaksyunan ito ng Senado (why Senate has not yet acted on it)," he said. Lacson left the country a month before a warrant of arrest was issued against him in February, claiming that he was avoiding persecution and political vendetta at the hands of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration. (See: Lacson flees RP to escape Arroyo ‘harassment’) The senator was linked to the abduction and presumed murders of publicist Salvador “Bubby" Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito, which were allegedly carried out Mafia-style by members of the defunct Police Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF). At that time, Lacson headed both the PAOCTF and the Philippine National Police (PNP). Mancao, also a PNP officer, was one of the key officials of the task force who later issued an affidavit naming Lacson as the "mastermind" in the Dacer-Corbito double murder.—Andreo C. Calonzo/JV, GMANews.TV