Corpus apologizes, Lacson accepts

Senator Panfilo Lacson on Wednesday said he welcomes the public apology of retired military intelligence chief Victor Corpus and expects others who wronged him to do the same.

In a statement, Lacson said Corpus' video apology, a copy of which was uploaded on Monday in a Facebook page called Punto de Labra, was “long in coming.”

"It's long in coming. Nevertheless, I still appreciate his gesture of humility and courage in doing so. Needless to say, I accept his apology," Lacson said.

Corpus, during his stint as chief of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP), has linked Lacson to illegal drug operations. In the video, he said making the accusation was a "grievous mistake" on his part.

Corpus also said his information was “devious and a fraud.”

"This grievous mistake that I have committed maligned the reputation of Sen. Panfilo Lacson," Corpus said. "For this grave error on my part, I humbly and sincerely offer my public apology to Sen. Lacson and his entire family."

To this, Lacson said: "Yes, I was informed that ex-ISAFP Chief Victor Corpus has finally admitted publicly that he had unjustly wronged me by being taken for a ride by a ‘fraud,’ obviously referring to Angelo ‘Ador’ Mawanay, who himself had retracted 13 years earlier, even pointing to those who were responsible in suborning him to commit perjury against me."

Mawanay once implicated Lacson of involvement in drug trafficking, but later recanted his accusations.

In one of the affidavits of Senior Supt. Glenn Dumlao in 2003, Dumlao said Corpus wanted him to implicate Lacson in certain crimes, including the Dacer-Corbito murders.

Dumlao, then deputy chief for operations of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) Task Group Luzon, is now the head of the Philippine National Police's (PNP) anti-kidnapping arm.

Lacson, a former PNP chief, said he also expects other individuals who took part in the investigation against him to also make their apologies.

"In the spirit of fairness and balanced reporting, I think it is but proper and decent for those who relied heavily on their statements, as the central characters responsible for  incessantly maligning my reputation to follow suit, or at least make amends, not pecuniarily, but simply to restore the moral damage they have done to my dignity and honor," he said.

Lacson went into hiding in 2010, two days before being charged with double murder for his alleged involvement in the killings of publicist Salvador Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in November 2000.

He said then that he left the country for safety reasons, and to escape the harassment of then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. He returned to the country on March 2011 after he was cleared by the Court of Appeals. —KBK, GMA News