Accused of non-bailable crime, pampered like a queen
Where in the world can we see a person accused of a non-bailable crime pampered like the queen of England? Only in the Philippines, that is, if you have these qualifications: be a former president, a plunderer, an election saboteur, and with a lot of talent in acting. Have all of the above-mentioned requirements and you can be sure you will never land in a cold, tight and steel-barred detention cell reserved only for those lacking such qualifications.
Instead, what you get is a detention cell which doesn’t look like one, but one that looks like a suite in a five-star hotel, freshly spruced-up, with a new adjustable cushion bed that bends high or low at the push of a button. You can even get the best doctors to see you at the snap of a finger, that is if you want to plant a message that you are really in bad shape (although you are not), and need to seek treatment abroad. You are also secured by uniformed guards 24/7 whose eyes rove as fast as, and are sharper than the eagle’s. But make no mistake of sneaking out from your suite or else your wrists will be locked up with the dreaded police bracelets and the cops that surround you won’t give a damn even if you are a little girl doing a lullaby.
Proof: Go one of these days to the Veterans Memorial Medical Center and ask to be guided to the presidential suite. What you can see inside is a little girl who is big in other things like plundering the nation’s purse and rigging electoral processes to ensure her victory and those of her candidates. You may hear sighs of pain and see tears in her eyes, but do not be carried away by what you hear and see because sighs and tears can come out naturally from talented actors like her. Her acting can put Vilma Santos or Nora Aunor to shame, don’t you agree? Did you see those braces in her back connected all the way to her forehead? They were there only as props to cultivate and earn public sympathy and win the government’s approval for her to leave (read: flee) the country on the pretext that she needs treatment abroad. The trick did not work and thanks to the Executive’s resolve to hold and keep her here.
A few days after she was back at the cutting-edge St. Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig, the back braces and the wheelchair suddenly became unnecessary and her doctors pronounced her to be physically fit and able to opt for a softer and kinder kind of arrest other than the steel-barred detention room.
Do you want to be treated like the queen of England? If you do: be a presidential candidate and win by hocus-pocus, plunder the nation’s wealth once elected, pretend to be seriously ill when caught, act like a Famas award winner, cry like a crocodile and flee the country if you don’t have a Department of Justice circular hanging over your head.
—MANUEL BIASON, Esq.,
