The country’s newly-appointed chief graft-buster said he would ‘demand’ lawyer Edna Herrera-Batacan, former legal counsel of President Rodrigo Duterte, to drop the name of the Ombudsman personnel behind the alleged corrupt practice in the anti-graft body.
“I will be demanding, not requesting, from Atty. Edna Batacan for her to identify the officer or employee na nabigyan niya ng pera na sabi niya (whom she gave the money to, she said,) as ‘parking fee’,” Ombudsman Samuel Martires told the media on Monday, July 30.
Batacan, who was also an applicant to the Ombudsman post, earlier told the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) that she was a ‘victim’ of ‘parking fee,’ a payment allegedly given to investigators to keep a pending case at the anti-graft office on hold.
“That office has become a graft office,” Batacan said on her panel interview last June 20.
“I’m a victim also, I know for a fact how it operates. Inordinate delay is contrary to the speedy disposition of cases, they have such a thing as parking fee in that office, when the case is filed and it’s just under preliminary [investigation], they will say ‘okay, I will just keep it on hold, for resolution, keep it on hold then you pay me parking fee’,” she added.
However, former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales said Batacan just dug up her own grave as the lawyer herself admitted that she was involved in the said pay-off.
“If you are party to corruption, you are corrupt yourself,” Morales previously told ANC’s Headstart.
Speaking to reporters, Martires refused to answer what possible charges would be lodged against Batacan as he just wants her to ‘cooperate’ with his office.
As the new anti-graft chief, Martires said one of his priorities is to address pending cases and the issue of inordinate delay which resulted to the dismissal of many cases at the Office of the Ombudsman.
“My priorities will be the pending cases, the issue of inordinate delay, which has been an issue that has been haunting the Sandiganbayan as well as the Supreme Court (SC),” he said.
“I will immediately look into that and the causes for delay,” he added.
Martires, who was Duterte’s very first appointee to the SC, was named as the new Ombudsman on Thursday, July 26, replacing Morales who retired last Wednesday, July 25.
[READ: Duterte appoints Martires for ombudsman post]
He vowed not to be used as an instrument by politicians to prosecute their political enemies, explaining that some of them file charges against their opponents for the sake of harassment.