PRESIDENTIAL candidate Sen. Panfilo Lacson yesterday said Interior Secretary Eduardo Año should not have outrightly defended PNP chief Dionardo Carlos on the latter’s use of a police helicopter to fetch him in Balesin Island last Monday.
“They should have just said that an investigation is underway. He (Año) should not have preempted it. It’s this simple. Is the use of the PNP helicopter to pick him up in Balesin Island official? If it is official, there is no problem. But if it is for personal use, there is something wrong,” Lacson said at the sidelines of their campaign sortie in Batangas.
In an interview last Tuesday, Año backed Carlos for using a PNP chopper to bring him back to Camp Crame from Balesin Island where he spent “private time with his family.”
The use of the chopper could not have caught attention if it had not crashed before it could reach Balesin Island, leaving a patrolman dead and its two pilots injured.
Año said the use of the police helicopter was “among the privileges (of Carlos) as head of (the) organization (PNP).”
Lacson, however, disagreed, saying it is a “gray area” that should be clarified by the PNP since Carlos went to Balesin Island to spend time with his family and wanted to get back at Camp Crame on a police helicopter since commercial flights were available only later that day.
“What was Carlos’ official function for him to request for an administrative flight? They need to clarify this. There’s no doubt that Carlos admitted that going to Balesin was his personal time (with his family), but we must also weigh that he has to go back to Camp Crame due to an official function,” Lacson said.
Lacson said PNP resources should not be treated as “for official use also,” even by the PNP chief.
“It’s funny but at the same time annoying. If we say ‘for official use only’, it should be for official use only,” he said.
Carlos, meanwhile, denied that he went to Balesin to meet the Ongpins and discuss the case of Julian Ongpin, the boyfriend of artist Bree Jonson who died in a resort in La Union last September.
In a statement, Carlos said: “The Julian Ongpin case was dismissed and is on appeal (MR).
The DOJ and the NBI have been handling the parallel investigation, long before I was appointed as Chief of the Philippine National Police. Any insinuation or attempt to link me to the Ongpin family is unfounded and baseless.”
