Mamamayang Liberal (ML) Party-list Representative Leila de Lima has expressed strong dismay over the acquittal of former Senate President and now Presidential Chief Legal Counsel Juan Ponce Enrile, his former chief-of-staff Gigi Reyes, and businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles, the alleged mastermind behind the pork barrel scam.
In a Facebook post shared on Friday, October 24, De Lima described the decision as deeply frustrating, recalling the years of effort poured into the prosecution of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) cases.
“This is always what is so frustrating for the Ombudsman and the DOJ. We started fresh and strong on the evidence when we filed the PDAF cases, strong enough to even deny Enrile and Reyes bail in the separate plunder cases,” the lawmaker said.
de Lima lamented how justice in the Philippines seems to depend on the people’s fading memory of political scandals.
“The problem is the slow wheels of justice, with the accused relying on the public’s short memory to eventually be absolved because of less scrutiny over their cases over years of trial,” she added.
The lawmaker also warned that if the same pattern continues in the ongoing flood control project anomaly, the pursuit of accountability might again fail.
“If this is what will happen to the flood control project cases, good luck to us. But then, some people are just really luckier than others,” De Lima said.
The Sandiganbayan’s Special Third Division dismissed the plunder case against Enrile, Reyes, and Napoles on October 24, citing insufficient evidence.
Enrile was first charged with plunder in 2013 for allegedly misusing his PDAF between 2004 and 2010. Napoles, on the other hand, was convicted in 2018 in connection with former Senator Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr.’s pork barrel funds.
Revilla and Senator Jinggoy Estrada were previously acquitted in similar cases—but both are once again embroiled in corruption allegations, this time involving supposed kickbacks from anomalous flood control projects.