“I hope he resurfaces soon because he has been missing for some time and he should be going back to do his work in the Senate,” Angara told reporters on the sidelines of a cybercrime forum in Makati City on Friday.

For Angara, a lawyer, the warrant for Lacson’s arrest was “automatically withdrawn” with the dismissal of the charges involving the Dacer-Corbito murders.

“If the court has said the main charge is wrong, ... the arrest warrant issued pursuant to that charge will be automatically withdrawn,” Angara said.

But should prosecutors file a motion for reconsideration or elevate the case to the Supreme Court, and the Court of Appeals’ ruling is reversed, the arrest warrant will be “reinstated,” he said.

Angara said he was “glad that the Court of Appeals had vindicated” Lacson. But he pointed out that the appellate court was not “the end of the process.”

“I don’t know if the government pursues an appeal [with the Supreme Court],” he said.

Asked what the public could perceive in Lacson’s being a fugitive for more than a year, Angara said: “I don’t want to interpret his absence. We leave that to each one to interpret and to extract the message of that absence. But the thing is, as the Court of Appeals has said, the [murder] charge is void and has been dismissed.”

Nikko Dizon, Phil. Daily Inquirer