EDITORIAL - Ping "Pidaling" again

Senator Panfilo Lacson announced to media last Tuesday that he may seek the reopening of the Jose Pidal investigation, saying he has obtained documents showing that the Jose Pidal bank accounts remain active with several huge deposits having been made.

In 2003, Lacson accused Mike Arroyo, husband of then president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, of maintaining secret bank accounts for money laundering purposes. The accounts were supposedly in the name of Jose Pidal.

Rushing to his aid, Mike’s younger brother Iggy claimed he was Jose Pidal and that the money contained in the accounts were clean and legitimate. Iggy recently died in London, with his remains expected to be repatriated today. Two things:

Filipino culture and time-honored traditions require respect, both for the dead, as well as for the grieving. Couldn’t Lacson have waited until Iggy was laid to rest? After all, his real target, Mike, is still very much around, prevented from leaving by a hostile government.

As an afterthought, Lacson said in the same media interview that he may defer any action on the matter until after the mourning period for Iggy has passed. It is like saying he will be withholding his punches right after he has thrown some.

Then there is the matter of his claim to having obtained documents purporting to prove that the Jose Pidal accounts are still very much active, as evidenced by huge deposits made into the accounts.

Wouldn’t the bigger question be not about whether the bank accounts are still active or not but how Lacson managed to obtain the documents purporting to show movements in the accounts? Last we heard, bank secrecy laws were still very much in effect.

So how come Lacson has documents pertaining to the accounts? Were not any laws broken to obtain them? If laws were broken, doesn’t Lacson deserve some punishment? Or is the Jose Pidal case so imperative and urgent this government is willing to simply look the other way.