THE PRESIDENT LIKES CRIMINALS LIKE PING LACSON, JANET NAPOLES AND MURAD

Janet does a Ping, 2

By Jojo Robles | Posted on Aug. 30, 2013 at 12:01am | 4,847 views

As if anyone needed more proof that President Noynoy Aquino and Janet Lim Napoles were close, the Chief Executive and his minions just provided us with incontrovertible evidence of that fact. Indeed, the last time Aquino personally took in a fugitive from justice was when he and then Senator Panfilo Lacson exchanged recipes in Malacañang; now Lacson has been cleared of double murder charges and is being considered for a top position in the Cabinet.
You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that Napoles’ surrender has all the signs that she will be eventually cleared of conspiring with Congress, the Department of Budget and Management and a host of other Executive agencies and local governments that served as conduits for the pocketing of billions upon billions of legislative pork. Napoles was not only concerned about her security when she gave herself up—she was also securing her get-out-of jail card from the President himself.

TRAITOR PING LACSON WAS AN ESCAPED FUGITIVE WHO NEGOTIATED HIS SURRENDER AND PARDON FROM PNOY NA GAGO
 
Despite all the explanations of Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda (who just happened to have worked for Napoles lawyer Lorna Kapunan in Kapunan’s law office), I am not convinced that the businesswoman surrendered only because she feared for her life. Instead, using the Lacson case and the previous preferential treatment accorded by Aquino to Napoles as guides, I would hazard a guess that the woman being blamed for the pork barrel scandal will never see the inside of a jail cell.

NAPOLES SURRENDERED TO PNOY FOR HER "PROTECTION"

A deal was hammered out to convince Napoles to surrender, that much is plain. And the fact that Aquino—who cannot even be bothered to appear during calamities—personally brought Napoles to the national police headquarters in Camp Crame is unsettling to those expecting that she should rot in jail for the rest of her life.
Roxas, Lacierda and the other Palace apologists say that the declaration of a P10-million bounty for information that would lead to Napoles’ arrest supposedly panicked the businesswoman and made her seek out Aquino. But I think that the “floating” of the idea that Napoles could turn state witness in the scandal—despite her being the “most guilty” in the matter—was the more important motivation for her to resurface; and if Napoles had been convinced to “sing” to stay out of jail, guess what her tune is going to sound like?

THE PRESIDENT IS DEALING WITH CROOKS AND REBELS
 
Napoles is certainly not going to warble about Aquino, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and Senate President Franklin Drilon, now that she has sought and received the protection of the administration. And if I were a politician who had employed Napoles’ services in the past and I happen to be out of Aquino’s favor, I would be very, very afraid.
Somebody has got to take the fall for the theft of the pork barrel funds. And now that Napoles is under the protection of the Aquino administration, it certainly isn’t going to be anyone allied with Malacañang—or even, sadly, Napoles herself.
* * *

 

DANGEROUS MEN PLANNING AND EXECUTING THINGS WITHOUT PERMISSION AND CONSENT FROM THE PEOPLE

No matter how the Palace spinners spin it, Napoles has always been a Palace favorite. This was why the businesswoman’s letter to Aquino last April, complaining about the National Bureau of Investigation’s alleged harassment of her brother Benjamin Lim, was so urgently acted upon by the President.
That letter, which has supposedly gone missing, gave everyone an inkling of how close Napoles was to Aquino. And it bothers me that no one seems to have pursued the Aquino-Napoles relationship angle in the long-running story.
(To this day, I don’t understand why no one has asked Aquino—or Abad or Drilon, for that matter—directly if he personally knows Napoles. Surely, there must be at least one reporter who can gather up the courage to ask such an important question.)
Napoles’ letter to Aquino was what triggered the entire scandal, because it led to a series of official actions which began with the President directing Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to investigate the NBI agents identified by Napoles as those shaking down her brother. De Lima reportedly told NBI Director Nonnatus Rojas to look into the matter.
Rojas supposedly confronted his agents and told them that the President himself had expressed an interest in Lim’s case. The agents, fearing that they might lose their jobs because they thought, rightly or wrongly, that the President was on the side of Napoles and her brother, ran to a newspaper executive, who broke the story in her newspaper, through an aide of hers who got the “byline” credit.
That was then; the Napoles surrender is “now.” And this latest episode still reinforces the belief that Napoles is such a big shot in this administration, for reasons that no official has sufficiently explained.
* * *
Lacierda said yesterday that people should make up their mind about Napoles. First, he said, it was “arrest Napoles”; when she gave herself up, the administration was accused of giving her special treatment.
But Lacierda has always been a little slow. He can’t understand that calls to arrest Napoles and giving her a tour of Malacañang, with the President himself escorting her to the sanctuary of her choice in Camp Crame, are not the same thing.
This President is served by stupid people. No wonder he’s always getting into trouble.