Lacson bares invitation to junta, declines role
Even Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson was approached by some retired military officers to be part of a “civilian-military junta” that will replace President Marcos amid the flood control corruption scandal, but the senator said on Sunday that he rebuffed them.
“There were those inciting and want a civil-military junta. Some retired military officers have reached out to me, I won’t mention names, I was ignoring them,’’ said Lacson, who has an ongoing inquiry into allegations linking lawmakers, public works officials and private contractors to anomalous flood control projects as chair of the Senate blue ribbon committee.
“Some even offered that I be part of the ‘junta,’ of the ‘council.’ But I did not entertain them,” he added in an interview over dzBB.
Lacson said he could not entirely blame the retired officers for floating the idea of a junta “perhaps in their passion to change the system because they saw how systemic corruption has become.”
‘Vested interests’
Even so, the senator told proponents of unconstitutional proposals such as the setting up of “transition council” and a military-backed “reset” to “dream on.”
Malacañang welcomed Lacson’s rejection of the plan to replace the President with a junta or a transition council, and agreed that this violates the Constitution.
“The people behind this so-called ‘transition council’ have only one goal—to remove Pres. Marcos, Jr. not for the country, not for the Filipinos, but for their own vested interests,” Palace press officer Claire Castro told the Inquirer.
Earlier this month, Malacañang said the government’s intelligence agencies were verifying reports if the Duterte family, among others, was behind retired military officials’ call for a withdrawal of support for the Commander in Chief.
Since it broke in September, the corruption scandal has set off a series of mass protests involving the Catholic clergy, university students and members of a religious sect, and fueled talk of destabilization against the government.
In a news forum on Oct. 3, Armed Forces chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. confirmed that some retired officers and active younger officers reached out to him during the Sept. 21 anticorruption protests calling for the military to intervene.
Active military officers rejected their calls, which included mounting a “coup d’etat in order to come up with a reset of the Philippine society, or a withdrawal of support for the Commander in Chief, Brawner said.
‘Rise above noise’
In Baguio City, Brawner advised cadets of the Philippine Military Academy to “rise above the noise” during the recognition rites of the academy’s 333 new freshmen cadets of Class Madasilak of 2029 on Saturday.
“Do not allow yourself to be misled by shallow commentary or to be provoked by divisive commentary,” Brawner said in a speech.
Instead, cadets must “think critically, speak with restraint, act with prudence—and above all, seek the truth,” the AFP chief said. —WITH REPORTS FROM DEXTER CABALZA AND VINCENT CABREZA
