Start of a gang-up

The arrest of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Friday changed overnight the landscape of the Philippine judicial system.  President Benigno Aquino III triumphantly proclaimed this was only the beginning of his much-vaunted pledge to combat graft and corruption. In the process, he wants to show that: (1) he is incorruptible; and, (2) he is determined to prosecute officials of the previous administration for alleged corrupt acts and abuse of power.

Specifically, Mr. Aquino said, the arrest of Arroyo after she had been charged with alleged electoral sabotage “is just the start of the process.”  He held up the prosecution of Arroyo as the result of the “reform I have laid out to combat corruption.”

The repetition of the theme of incorruptibility has become a bit overdone, so much so that many Filipinos are beginning to ask whether the campaign to prosecute Arroyo would successfully be carried out without sacrificing the constitutionally protected principles of due process and rule of law. Justice Secretary Leila de Lima has prematurely celebrated the instant production of the serious charge of electoral sabotage, saying it was “the real triumph for justice.”  She said, “Justice has been served.”

Whose justice? may I ask. Within one day, the charge was produced by a joint panel of the Department of Justice and the Commission on Elections, an arrangement that raised questions about why the Comelec was working hand in glove with the administration when it is supposed to be an independent institution, not the government’s prosecution arm. This irregular arrangement immediately cast doubt on the independence of the Comelec and the credibility and fairness of the process of putting Arroyo on trial.

The events of the past few days leading to the issuance by the Supreme Court  last November 15 of the temporary restraining order allowing Arroyo to travel abroad to seek medical treatment of a bone disease were marked by haste and rush by both the administration  and Arroyo. On the part of the administration, there was an indecent rush to stop Arroyo from leaving and to ignore the TRO, because of strong suspicions that the medical reason for the travel was a cover for seeking asylum abroad to escape trial in the cases being prepared by the government. On the part of Arroyo, she did not come with clean hands, giving misleading or confusing information about her destinations, even as medical opinion was divided over whether her condition was life-threatening and required treatment abroad.

In any case, the TRO was disdainfully disregarded by the Aquino administration on Friday. Then the TRO became moot after the government rushed the filing of charges against Arroyo before the Pasay regional trial court and within two hours, the court issued a warrant of arrest against Arroyo, effectively grounding her at the St. Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig where she has been confined.

In effect the arrest of Arroyo achieved the objective and the promise of Aquino to send her to jail by Christmas.

Petty-minded and diehard Aquino supporters quibble over the point that Arroyo’s confinement in a hospital is not imprisonment. Regardless of whether she is in comfortable quarters or in New Bilibid Prison or in  a police or military compound, the fact it that she is a prisoner, confined within four walls and under guard, after having been booked as an accused criminal and subjected to the formalities of detention such as  finger-printing, mug shots, etc.  Let us not have any illusion that she is a free citizen.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not pleading for leniency for her; I want her to face trial—but a fair one. She should not be fast-tracked to the gallows to gratify the blood lust and the demand for retribution for the crimes attributed to her, including some of the most heinous in our penal code. I do not argue about her guilt or innocence. That determination is the job of the courts of justice.

The administration’s claim of adherence to and respect for due process fly in the face of a number of abridgments of fair administration of justice and short-cuts, including the following:

The government charged Arroyo with the crime of election sabotage, which is nonbailable and carries the penalty of life imprisonment, in effect, putting her in jail indefinitely until the case is decided by the courts. The plunder case of Joseph Estrada was decided after six years. If this is the yard stick, she could be in jail even after the term of President Aquino.

Arroyo was accused of conspiring with former Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr. and election supervisor Lintang Bedol  in “willfully, feloniously and unlawfully tamper(ing with) election results” in Maguindanao.

Pasay City RTC Judge Jesus Mupas issued an arrest warrant after he found probable cause to prosecute the respondents. The court appeared to have gone out of its way to rush the case.  The Comelec, which filed the case, had asked only for a hold-departure order against Arroyo, not an arrest warrant because the latter would require a court hearing. The case was filed on a Friday, and the judge decided to issue an arrest warrant instead—a decision that stunned even the government, according to observers.

Procedural short-cuts like this illustrate to what lengths the administration would go to stack up the odds in its favor in the trial. The administration has thrown the crushing weight of the entire judicial machinery behind its determination to convict Arroyo in the first test case to deliver a credible result in its anti-corruption campaign. It faces the heavy burden of proving that the trial is not a showcase of lynch-mob justice.