EDITORIAL - Fugitive

Senator Panfilo Lacson, who is in hiding after being implicated in the murder of PR man Salvador Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito, said he is not going to turn himself in until he can be assured of justice. Otherwise he would rather be dead.

 Lacson cannot be said to have a short memory. So let it just be said that his memory is of the selective kind. He remembers what he chooses to remember, and forgets what he chooses to forget.

Lacson said exactly the same thing when he first went into hiding about a year ago. Only the circumstances were different. When he said the same thing then, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was still president. Having been a bitter Arroyo critic, it was easier to buy his line at the time.

 But there is a new president now. Noynoy Aquino was swept into office on a huge tide of renewed public confidence in government, fueled by promises of hope and change. Even Lacson had hopes in the new administration.

Alas, those hopes were of a different kind. Lacson apparently hoped that having cozied up to Noynoy as a fellow critic of Arroyo, the new administration would go slow on the Dacer-Corbito murders. But some of Noynoy's people saw things differently, and Noynoy was not about to meddle.

 Actually, it was Lacson who dug himself into a hole by going into hiding. With a standing warrant for his arrest, that left the new Aquino administration with no alternative but to go after him.

 Lacson, for all his intelligence, should have anticipated that at the time he went into hiding, the days of Arroyo were numbered. There was no way to stop the Aquino juggernaut, had he submitted himself to the law, it wouldn't have been long before he could have been sprung.

 If Noynoy can free rebels who turned against the government, how much more for a senator who has not yet been convicted. Besides, the persecution yarn he wove around himself at the time of Arroyo could possibly still have served him in good stead under Aquino.

 But by continuing to be on the lam, Lacson is slowly running himself out of options. And as each day passes that the senator refuses to submit to the rule of law, not only is the irony underscored, his own credibility gets increasingly undermined. He is becoming a true fugitive.