Who else did ex-ombudsman 'secretly' exonerate?

Ex-ombudsman Samuel Martires would do well to answer that question.

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Filipinos find suspicious his erstwhile unknown pardon of Sen. Joel Villanueva for graft as far back as 2019.

Martires' claim is queer. He never publicized his exculpation of Villanueva supposedly to "protect a person's dignity." Duh! Doesn't absolution from a crime restore a person's dignity? So why hide it? Baligtad na ba ang mundo? Queerer is Villanueva's silence all these years. His graft buster image was tarnished 17 years ago in 2008 when as Citizen's Battle Against Corruption party rep he was linked to P10-million sleaze.

In 2013 pork barrel-fixer Janet Lim Napoles named Villanueva among her 100 congressmen-accomplices. In 2016 thenombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales ordered him, then a newly-elected senator, dismissed from public office.

Wouldn't he have gone to town with his absolution 11 years later in 2019? Yet he was silent.

His clearance came during Martires' first year in office. In that first year Martires made more difficult the public's access to officials' statements of assets, liabilities and net worth.

His appointer president Rodrigo Duterte had refused to divulge his SALNs.