The president said there are more lawmakers who are involved in the 2013 PDAF scam.
President Rodrigo Duterte plans to reopen the Napoles issue or the multi-billion pesos pork barrel fund scam.
In a press conference in Davao City on early Sunday morning, Duterte said, some lawmakers implicated in the 2013 pork barrel scam are already detained, but the President says it is ‘not enough vindication for the Filipino people’
Duterte said he wants to revisit the Napoles issue and he has a big revelation regarding it. He assured the public can expect him to reveal the truth and let the people responsible to answer for their involvement.
The President was referring to Janet Lim Napoles, the alleged mastermind of the misuse of lawmakers’ pork barrel or the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).
“But in between this foreign wide consultancy, I would now raise again the Napoles issue. There are a lot of billions and billions of pesos lost. We have been able just only to put several law makers inside but only because the charge, the accusation is non-bailable. otherwise, whether to tell, if you have to recon and tell whether they’d be eventually put in prison, with finality, or acquitted, in the mean time they are in prison but is not enough vindication for the Filipino people,” said President Duterte.
“Let us revisit the Napoles case. I have some revealing things to tell you about it. You just wait, but I will, if that is the only thing that I have to do until the end of my term, I will do it, for I shall have done singular task, giving you the truth about the government. The reason why I’m, I was raising like this.(raises right arm with fist closed) It was in defiance all the time I was campaigning because I was mad at government.”
Duterte explained that this is part of his deal with the Filipino electorate to stop corruption in government.
“There are billions and billions of pesos lost. We’ve been able just only to put several lawmakers inside, but only because the charge, the accusation is non-bailable,” Duterte noted.
Months after the pork barrel scam unraveled, the PDAF was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in November 2013.
