CHARGE LACSON, 3 SENATE COMMITTEES RECOMMEND

MINUTES before the opposition bloc claimed to have taken control of the
Senate on Monday, the chairpersons of three Senate committees released a
joint report recommending the filing of kidnap-for-ransom and
drug-trafficking charges against Senator Panfilo Lacson.

The committees on public order and illegal drugs under Senator Robert
Barbers, on national defense and security under Senator Ramon Magsaysay
Jr., and the blue ribbon committee under Senator Joker Arroyo also
recommended that criminal charges be filed against Lacson's men in the
disbanded Presidential Anti-Organized-Crime Task Force (PAOCTF).

Committee Report No. 66 said the Department of Justice should pursue an
investigation of Lacson's possible participation, together with police
superintendents Reynaldo Acop, John Campos and Francisco Villaroman, in the
kidnapping of six Chinese nationals and for drug trafficking.

The kidnapping " ... has been substantially established by prima facie
evidence," it said.

Lacson was quick to dismiss the report as "a mere draft and, therefore, a
malicious gossip."

He noted that only those who belonged to the "former majority" signed the
report. "And to attribute (the report to the Senate reorganization Monday)
makes it doubly malicious," he said. "They are just sour-graping."

The committees headed by Arroyo, Barbers, and Magsaysay had conducted an
inquiry into the alleged kidnapping and drug trafficking activities of
Lacson when he was head of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the PAOCTF.

Barbers said the opposition moved for the reorganization of the Senate to
prevent the release of the committee report.

"That report has been finished and finalized. So that is why they had to
make their move to reorganize," Barbers said.

Copies of the report were spirited out of the office of Senate President
Franklin Drilon just when it looked like that the Senate impasse would not
be resolved.

"With that coup, if the committee chairs are changed, then the Lacson
report will not be released," Arroyo said. "It was a pre-emptive strike."

The report said Lacson and his men should be investigated for their
complicity in the abduction of Chiong Hiu Mong, Wong Kam Chong, spouses
Zeng Jia Xuan and Hong Zhen Quiao, their nephew Zeng Kang Fang, and driver
James Ong.

"General Lacson, while in the police service, was accountable for neglect
of duty under the doctrine of command responsibility," it said.

It noted that the "PAOCTF miserably failed in its mission, yet it was the
agency specially organized, specially tasked, specially funded and
specially empowered to counter-act organized drug cartels."

Lacson could be held liable for violation of the PNP Code of Professional
Conduct and the Code of Conduct of Public Officials, the report said.

It took Lacson to task for endorsing the Chinese embassy's request for the
investigation of the abduction of a Chinese national to Villaroman when the
latter was himself named one of the abductors of Wong Kam Chong.

"To state that the solution to the drug menace will require the national
leadership to demonstrate its political will by taking drastic action,
letting the chips fall where they may, is to say the obvious," the report said.

It also noted that "the statistics on the status of the drug problem
parlayed during the hearings are frightening."

"The situation is even made more gloomy by the evidence establishing the
involvement in the drug trade and drug-related organized crimes of the top
echelon mandated to suppress them," it added.

Aside from Barbers, Magsaysay and Arroyo, senators Renato Cayetano, Juan
Flavier, Francis Pangilinan, Loren Legarda-Leviste, Manuel Villar, Noli de
Castro and Ralph Recto signed the joint committee report. All are
administration allies.

New Senate majority floor leader Aquilino Pimentel chided Barbers,
Magsaysay and Arroyo for releasing the draft report without giving the
former minority members the chance to read it.

"I, myself, saw my name in the report yet I have yet to read it," Pimentel
said.