‘Historic event’

Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo pleaded “not guilty” Thursday before the Pasay City Regional Trial Court to the charge of electoral sabotage in connection with the 2007 senatorial elections. Evincing her characteristic briskness and her business-like attitude, she made her lawyers waive the reading of the charges so that she could be indicted at once. Before Judge Jesus Mupas, Arroyo, the former president, now representative of Pampanga, stood calmly and entered her plea. Outside, some 2,000 supporters had welcomed her arrival. As quickly as she had come, she left the court, waving to them, before boarding her van for the trip back to her detention at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City.

A week before, her lawyers had requested the court that she be arraigned separately from former Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr. and election supervisor Lintang Bedol, her two co-accused in the case. The latter two had asked the court for a deferment of the arraignment, which was granted by Mupas who moved the date to March 19. But Arroyo’s lawyers later told the court that the former president wanted to be arraigned at once, because of the strain of postponements on her physical condition (she’s nursing a degenerative bone disease), as well as the security problems that would arise should all three be brought to the court at the same time. Perhaps the gesture was a show of bravura in a nation of grand but often vacuous political theatrics. But the insistence to be arraigned immediately and the promptness with which Arroyo went to Pasay City from her detention in Quezon City, and the poise and serenity with which she entered her plea, should at least impress even her detractors of her self-confidence as well as her trust in the law and its workings.

The charges against her are ugly: she’s accused of no less than stealing the ballot and undermining the elections, the cornerstone of republican democracy. But it’s the same constitutional democracy—with its rules and procedures ensuring due process and fair and honest dispensation of justice—that would be her defense and support. Just as those who claimed to have been robbed of their electoral victory in 2007 (when she allegedly ordered a 12-0 result in the senatorial elections in Maguindanao in favor of her political coalition) had run to the succor of the law for justice and redress, she is now seeking relief and, perhaps, redemption from the same system.

Truly, what happened last Thursday was democracy in action. Like the handover of the reins of power to her successor, Benigno Aquino III in 2010, the arraignment of Arroyo and her no-fuss entering of a not-guilty plea, should indicate that the nation has grown in democratic grace. That advance may not be immediately evident in the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, since impeachment is a heavily political process. But there’s no gainsaying that all of the protagonists, including the impeached himself, have recognized the trial as part of the workings of truth-finding and justice in a democracy. Moreover, the public that has religiously followed the trial through the Senate gallery or the media has been educated on democracy and its byways, its logic and its self-correcting remedies.

Arroyo herself during her reign had presided over the prosecution and conviction for plunder of deposed President Joseph Estrada. Sentenced to 40 years in jail, Estrada was later pardoned by Arroyo. She now has to undergo trial like her predecessor, which, she must understand, is part of the dynamics of constitutional democracy. In short, she must give an accounting of her administration. As Malacañang spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said, “Accountability escapes no one.” Of course, it’s an odd twist of fate that she’s being charged with violation of Republic Act 9369, the law against electoral sabotage that was passed only in 2007 and which she herself signed five months before the 2007 elections.

Arroyo has denied she broke the law and said politics is behind the accusation against her. But whether politically motivated or not, the charge and its veracity will have to be determined in a court of justice. Lacierda platitudinously called the trial of Arroyo as a “time of reckoning,” but court spokesperson Felda Domingo more appropriately called it “a very historic event,” since “this shows that no one is above the law.” “Whether you’re a president or not,” she added, “you have to go through the process to which you are entitled.” In short, Arroyo will have her day in court. She deserves nothing less.