History’s footprint

“Better to make prime ministers out of prisoners than prisoners out of prime ministers.” The late Lord Caradon (1907-1990) distilled that lesson from decades-long diplomatic service.

Some insist that the Caradon axiom fits former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. GMA is dogged by non-bailable charges of plunder and election fraud, they note. But Nelson Mandela of South Africa, we think, suits the Caradon billing better.

Mandela battled apartheid when he led the African National Congress’ armed wing. He served 27 years of a life sentence. After Robben Island prison let him go, Mandela topped South Africa’s first free elections, then served as president from 1994 to 1999. Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize and the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The 13th president of the Philippines, in 2007, was convicted of plunder. The anti-graft court sentenced Joseph Estrada to 40 years but acquitted him of perjury charges. Then President Arroyo pardoned Erap who had been under house arrest.

Estrada returned the favor by prodding Arroyo “to face the music” of the charges. Refuse to go abroad, he suggested. The best example is Erap, he says without blushing. Estrada never considered escape by wiggling through asylum.

The 14th Philippine president and former First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo have not been formally charged, so far. Neither have they been tried, let alone convicted. So, there’s no basis for forecasting that history will repeat itself “as farce.”

Ecuador’s President Gustavo Noboa and Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra scrammed. Not the former First Couple, their spokesperson, Elena Bautista-Horn, assures everyone within hearing range. GMA wrote the Department of Justice, in fact, that she’ll “return and face all charges.”

Return from where? Spain in Europe or Dominican Republic in the Caribbean? Grant of asylum, by any nation, would short-circuit current investigations.

Ecuador’s Noboa also reeled from pummeling due to 2003 sleaze charges in a $0.9 billion foreign debt overrun. “I have taken one of my life’s most bitter decisions: to solicit political asylum,” Noboa said before leaving Quito for  Santo Domingo.

Dominican Republic’s foreign minister Carlos Morales Troncoso denied, over the weekend, reports that GMA, like Noboa, had badgered for asylum in his nation. “We have not received an application for asylum,” he told the Associated Press.

A gaffe stoked what had been, until then a scuttlebutt, into this unseemly international exchange. GMA never visited Santo Domingo, her camp earlier said. Within hours, that claim crumbled. Inquirer and other media ran photos of Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez vesting, last May, the Order of Merit of Duarte on GMA, at the Hall of Ambassadors in the National Palace.

Di man makita ang apoy/Sa usok ay matutunton, Filipinos say. “Even if you don’t see the flames, you can locate it by the smoke.”

“There are documents that show that the asylum status was given to her by the Dominican Republic’s concurrent ambassador Frank Hans Castellanos Dannenberg, on Oct. 25, 2011,” asserts publisher Jake Macasaet.

Bunk, snaps the Arroyo lawyers. It is not true that the former First Couple hold Dominican passports. “Nor have they sought asylum in any country.”

Asylum or flight is a well-beaten path. Son of the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, Saif, wangled asylum for “humanitarian reasons” in Niger. Blood-smeared Charles Taylor of Liberia wheedled for asylum in Nigeria. Peru sheltered former Bolivian cabinet ministers indicted for civilian deaths, and Venezuela’s opposition leader Manuel Rosales. In protest, Venezuela recalled its ambassador to Lima.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson ducked, for 14 months, sheriffs seeking to serve arrest warrants in the  non-bailable murder cases of publicist Salvador Dacer and his driver. He surfaced only when the Court of Appeals scrubbed the warrants.

“By tanking the charges, though Lacson was still at large, the Court of Appeals encouraged lawlessness and disrespect for law,” former Supreme Court chief justice Artemio Panganiban wrote in his Inquirer column.

Thailand’s Thaksin “pulled a Lacson” in August 2008. Multi-billionaire Thaksin didn’t return to Bangkok from the Olympic Games in Beijing. Instead of testifying in court on graft charges, he flew the coop—for Dubai.

Thaksin’s sale of Shin Corp. to Singaporean investors earned his family $1.9 billion. That  sparked massive tax evasion charges. Bangkok’s Supreme Court earlier stripped his family of $1.4 billion in contested assets. After trial in absentia on a conflict-of-interest charge, courts sentenced Thaksin to two years in jail.

A return to Thailand loomed after his sister Yingluck was elected prime minister. Bangkok floods and domestic resistance compel Thaksin, for now, to shuttle between London and Dubai and Hong Kong. He runs government by remote control, his critics say.

This historical footprint forms a context for the Supreme Court hearing of GMA’s petition that it clamp on a temporary restraining order and let her travel. The country needs a decision that blends the best of law with realities on the ground.

It offers a window-of-opportunity for scrubbing the derisive tag of being an Arroyo Court. This chance won’t come again. Will the former president welcome such grit? Knock on wood.

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