Escalante: Our talk that time was all joke

By Dominique Gabriel G. Bañaga

Negros Occidental Provincial Board Member Salvador Escalante, Jr. denied claims he called Negros Occidental Vice Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson a “drug user” during a conversation with Moises Padilla Mayor Magdaleno Peña.

“I deny that I implicated and categorically said that Vice Governor Lacson is using and has used drugs,” he stressed.

The issue arose after the mayor told local media Escalante called Lacson a “drug user,” to which the board member stated, “Our talk that time was all joke and nothing serious.”

“Mayor Peña and our family are friends, I was a phone call away from him and I even call him ‘manong,’” he explained. “I was surprised that he was recording our phone conversation and he revealed it to the media.”

The illegal drug rumor made headlines last year after former Barangay 35 Captain Manuel Huelar filed a legal affidavit, where he accused the vice governor and his brother of operating a “drug-selling kingdom” inside a Bacolod City subdivision.

Lacson earlier denied the allegations./DGB, WDJ