Ping blasts flip-flopping Vice President Sara accuser

MANILA, Philippines — Coming from a “flip-flopping witness,” the accusation of retired police officer Arturo Lascañas against Vice President Sara Duterte linking her to extrajudicial killings in Davao City lacks credibility and “cannot withstand the standards of a fair trial,” former senator Panfilo Lacson said yesterday.

In a post on X, Lacson expressed his distrust of Lascañas, recalling his appearance in 2016 before the Senate committee on public order and dangerous drugs “without any corroborating witness or physical evidence to support his testimony” against then president Rodrigo Duterte.

Based on Senate records obtained yesterday by The STAR, Lacson said the former police officer was “not the person to prove numerous unresolved crimes in Davao City.”

From an undisclosed location overseas, Lascañas told the media in a video interview on Wednesday of his submission of a 186-page affidavit to the International Criminal Court (ICC) containing information linking the former president and his daughter, now the Vice President and education chief, to the extrajudicial killings in Davao City.

Based on the sponsorship speech on May 24, 2017 of Lacson for the committee report on the Senate investigation on Lascañas’ confession, the former police officer recanted his testimonies many times, indicating his “unreliability.”

“The recantation of Lascañas was evaluated in the context of his uncorroborated statement, as against public records and evidence that he and other witnesses presented and submitted in the previous inquiry conducted by the committee on justice and human rights,” Lacson said. “Finally, his recantation was interpreted as a mere sign of his unreliability.”

A self-confessed member of Davao Death Squad, Lascañas first appeared before the Senate committee on justice and human rights on Oct. 3, 2016, to testify under oath on the existence of the DDS and on the elder Duterte’s involvement in the killings.

Lacson said the committee on public order and dangerous drugs launched the inquiry in response to the privilege speech of then senator Antonio Trillanes IV on the public confession of Lascañas.

He noted that Lascañas, an ailing man undergoing dialysis in a