{"id":101380,"date":"2017-05-08T18:41:20","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T22:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=101380"},"modified":"2017-05-08T18:41:20","modified_gmt":"2017-05-08T22:41:20","slug":"senators-lament-napoles-acquittal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/05\/08\/senators-lament-napoles-acquittal\/","title":{"rendered":"Senators lament Napoles\u2019 acquittal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Some<\/a>
Some senators on Monday lamented the acquittal of alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Napoles by the Court of Appeals (CA), hopeful that she would not get away with plunder charges filed against her. (Photo: Philippine News Agency<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA\u2013Some senators on Monday lamented the acquittal of alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Napoles by the Court of Appeals (CA), hopeful that she would not get away with plunder charges filed against her.<\/p>\n

Napoles was acquitted from illegal detention charges filed against her by whistle-blower Benhur Luy. However, would remain in detention for plunder charges in connection with the alleged pork barrel scam.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m hoping that the bigger case, she will not get away with it. Because I think the PDAF (priority development assistance fund) case is one of the most controversial case to have ever hound the Philippine senate,\u201d Sen. Joseph Victor Ejercito said in an interview.<\/p>\n

He was hopeful that similar pork barrel cases would no longer happen in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cPDAF is a taxpayers money so therefore she has to pay for it so that there will be no more occurrence of such crimes or scams in the future,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Neophyte Sen. Risa Hontiveros meanwhile said that Napoles\u2019 acquittal \u201cundermined\u201d the credibility of Luy as a state witness noting that it was his testimony that kept her and the accused high-profile public officials in jail.<\/p>\n

She further said that this could also mean that there was a chance public officials charged with plunder could be released.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis sets into motion the possible release from prison of all those responsible for plundering the nation’s coffers. This is truly a sad day for all those pushing for justice and accountability,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Sen. Panfilo Lacson, for his part, said that there was a chance that the decision was not final.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not final yet. Although kung acquittal, I don\u2019t know. Kung na-acquit ng lower court meron tayong tinatawag na double jeopardy. Di ako sigurado kung acquittal ng CA di na pwede iakyat sa SC kasi acquittal,\u201d Lacson said.<\/p>\n

(\u201cThat\u2019s not final yet. Although if it\u2019s acquittal, I don\u2019t know. If she was acquitted by the lower court, we have what you call double jeopardy. I\u2019m not sure if the acquittal of the CA could no longer be brought to the Supreme Court.\u201d)<\/p>\n

He, however, described the situation as \u201cinteresting times\u201d especially because the goal of the current administration was to pin down other legislators not included in the charge sheets.<\/p>\n

Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said that Napoles may be consider to be the government witness in connection with the planned review of pork barrel.<\/p>\n

He further said that the ongoing review of the pork barrel scam ordered by Pres. Rodrigo Duterte was meant to find out who else should be held accountable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u2013Some senators on Monday lamented the acquittal of alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Napoles by the Court of Appeals …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":101381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[18821,3675,1494,4306],"class_list":["post-101380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-acquittal","tag-court-of-appeals","tag-janet-lim-napoles","tag-senators","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}