Sen. Panfilo M. Lacson said yesterday it is the call of embattled Sen. Leila de Lima whether to resign or take a leave of absence or not as witnesses appearing before the House of Representatives have testified that they have given her drugs-tainted millions of pesos for her senatorial bid in the May 2016 national elections.
“I am not in a position to give her advice. It is her personal decision,’’ Lacson said.
Lacson is chairman of the Senate public order and dangerous drugs committee which served as a secondary committee to the public hearings by the Senate justice and human rights committee then chaired by De Lima on alleged summary killings of about 1,000 persons by the Davao Death Squad (DDS) when President Duterte was the Davao city mayor from 1988 to 2013.
On motion of Sen. Emmanuel Pacquiao. De Lima was later yanked out of her committee for supposedly being biased to President Duterte.
On the testimony of Jaybee Sebastian, an alleged drug lord at the National Bilibid Prison (NBP), that he has given P2 million for the campaign expenses of De Lima, Lacson said: “We don’t know whether it is true or not.’’
But he referred to the statement of Rep. Veloso, a former Court of Appeals (CA) Justice until reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70, in yesterday’s public hearing by the House of Representatives on Sebastian’s testimony.
“Stand alone, walang value yong mga statements but pinagtahitahi mo may mabubuo kang conclusion,’’ Lacson said in analyzing Veloso’s questioning of Sebastian. (Mario Casayuran)