Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said on Wednesday President Benigno S. Aquino III would not be investigated for August 23 hostage drama.

De Lima said this shortly after Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda announced that President Aquino will appear before probers of the August 23 hostage incident if there is a need to do so.

She said the Chief Executive will not be investigated but may be requested to serve as mere resource person in case the panel decides to ask him to appear.

At this time, De Lima said it was unnecessary to invite President Aquino.

“But I don’t want to rule out the remotest possibility of inviting him to attend the proceeding,” she said.

She further said: “At this point, that was unnecessary but we cannot rule it out completely. On the extreme or unlikely scenario, his attendance is not to investigate him but to aid us to achieve our work.”

“We have not invited him but we can still invite him though. There maybe factual issues that may come up and he can guide us,” she continued Lacierda said the President maintained that “heads will roll” because of the incident but such measure, he said, would not be easy to do for the time being.

“We have to make sure first that we can replace those who will be axed. And I'm not saying that flippantly, you have to make sure the people you put in critical units can perform. It's not they’re just in the zone, not because they are qualified in a general sense they can already take the posts. It should be in a very specific sense, especially when we’re trying to recapture the confidence not only of our people but also our international friends. That we are a place that is perhaps not immune like they are from crime and terrorism but at the same time, we are not a very dangerous place because we are doing our responsibilities,” he explained.

Aquino admitted that Department of the Interior and Local Government Undersecretary for Peace and Order Rico Escalona Puno is “partly” to blame in the incident since he was the one in-charge of the police during the hostage drama last August 23.

Puno, he said, was designated temporary officer-in-charge of the PNP since DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo was tasked to focus was on the local governments.

This was Aquino's response when asked if he sees no conflict with Robredo's being part of the investigative committee on the hostage drama led by De Lima even if the DILG has direct supervision over the Philippine National Police (PNP). Some sectors had asked Aquino to sack Robredo for the PNP's mishandling of the hostage rescue.

Secretary Herminio Coloma of Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), meanwhile, welcomed Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Liu Jianchao statement that the Chinese government and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region are satisfied with the progress of the probe being undertaken by Philippine authorities on the bloody hostage-taking, saying that it is a break from the bad news the country had been receiving because of the hijacking incident.

In a related development, De Lima said she and other members of the Incident Investigation and Review Committee (IICR) would discuss the internal rules and mechanics of the formal proceedings.

“We already sent various letter inviting three other members of the committee – the representative of the Filipino-Chinese Committee Teresita Ang-See, the representative from Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP), and from the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), she said.