(Eagle News) — Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales on Monday, July 9, said lawyer Edna Batacan was “digging her own grave” in her Judicial and Bar Council interview.
“She was digging her own grave because she said she was a victim, she was participant to a payoff so I said if you’re party to corruption, you are corrupt yourself,” Morales said in a television interview.
She was apparently making reference to Batacan’s admission she was a party to a payoff “just to know the status of a case.”
Batacan justified this by saying “You have to please your client… They say to play along with their (Ombudsman’s) music… just so the clients’ (cases) would end.”
Morales also noted lawyer Ferdinand Topacio’s allegation Batacan was given P8 million by a client supposedly requested by “certain persons in the Ombudsman.”
This was allegedly in exchange for the dismissal of the charges against the client.
According to Morales, to be an Ombudsman, “you have to have competence, you have to have honesty, you have to have industry.”
“If she has all of these, go ahead please. But by all indications, my God. Look at her interview. You be the judge,” she said.
Batacan earned the ire of Morales after she called the Office of the Ombudsman “graft-ridden.”
Batacan added Ombudsman investigators were asking for a “parking fee” to delay acting on cases at the preliminary stage.