MikeLigalig.com

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/
Tuesday, September 17, 2013


FORMER Senator Francisco Tatad should stop lying, a Palace official said Tuesday.

Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said that Tatad's allegation that Janet Lim-Napoles, the alleged brain in the multi-billion pork barrel scam, was actually in Malacanang for six hours prior to her surrender to President Benigno Aquino III on August 28, was not true as he accused the former senator of just being up for publicity.

"He (Tatad) has been criticizing the government for a long time. He has lots of inside stories which were not true. This is just one of those many tall tales that he has already fabricated for the last several months," he said in a press briefing.

Asked of his message to Tatad, a public information minister during the time of late President Ferdinand Marcos, Lacierda said, "stop lying."

He also debunked Tatad's allegation that he was the one who accompanied Napoles in going to the Palace before noon on the day of her supposed surrender,

"He calls me the handler of Napoles. My goodness, for all intents and purposes, I have never met the lady until that day," he stressed.

Lacierda said that Tatad could continue standing by his story on Napoles' supposed "closed-door conversations" with the President and other Cabinet officials, but as far as the Palace was concerned, it was not true.

"He can stand all he wants...he can say all he wants, but the fact is it never happened," he said.

Napoles surrendered to the President through Lacierda's facilitation. (SDR/Sunnex)