‘Unbelievably fortunate’

It seems to be only a matter of time. On Wednesday and Thursday, former president Gloria Arroyo underwent a medical checkup at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City, after the Sandiganbayan granted her a furlough from her detention at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center on humanitarian grounds. Apparently, the hospital for veterans does not have the equipment to run the specialized tests that Arroyo requires.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court issued an order stopping Arroyo’s plunder trial for 30 days. The ruling was actually a status quo ante order, but it effectively granted Arroyo’s petition for a temporary restraining order against the Sandiganbayan, which is hearing her plunder case. It also allows the high court time to weigh Arroyo’s other petition, which is to reverse the antigraft court’s decision last February denying her motion for bail.

These developments cannot but be understood in the context of the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling in Enrile vs Sandiganbayan last August, which granted bail to Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile who was also in hospital detention for a plunder case. It seems it’s only a matter of time before the same slim majority in the Supreme Court will find for Arroyo, and also grant her prayer for bail on humanitarian grounds.

Arroyo, a representative of the second district of Pampanga who filed her certificate of candidacy for a third term last week, is detained on the charge of illegally using P366 million in intelligence funds of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office for personal gain. She was arrested in 2012, but has been detained at the VMMC ever since because of a degenerative bone disease.

In her petition to the Supreme Court, Arroyo’s counsel has included the finding of a United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which recommended that her bail application be reconsidered “in accordance with the relevant international human rights standards.” This should have no bearing on the high court’s deliberations, but who knows? The Enrile precedent proves the truth of the old axiom that the law is what a majority in the Supreme Court says it is.

Consider Justice Marvic Leonen’s damning words in his vigorous dissent. Enrile’s “release for medical and humanitarian reasons was not the basis for his prayer in his Motion to Fix Bail filed before the Sandiganbayan. Neither did he base his prayer for the grant of bail in this Petition on his medical condition. The grant of bail, therefore, by the majority is a special accommodation for petitioner. It is based on a ground never raised before the Sandiganbayan or in the pleadings filed before this court.”

When the Enrile decision was released, both Malacañang and the Department of Justice expressed concern. Palace spokesperson Abigail Valte noted that the sweeping decision was “essentially uncharted territory.” Then Justice Secretary Leila de Lima worried about “the lack of guidance or standards in the majority ruling as to how to deal with similar petitions for bail.” They must surely have had the case of former president Arroyo in mind.

Leonen’s own dissent was concerned less about sailing into uncharted waters and more about using a ship that only the very privileged can afford. “Our precedents show that when there are far less powerful, less fortunate, poorer accused, this court has had no difficulty denying a motion to fix bail or motion to set bail where the crime charged carries the imposable penalty of reclusion perpetua. With less powerful accused, we have had no difficulty reading the plain meaning of Article III, Section 13 of the Constitution. With those who are less fortunate in life, there are no exceptions.” And then the clincher:

“Petitioner in this case is unbelievably more fortunate.”

It seems it is only a matter of time before a majority of justices in the Supreme Court will take judicial notice of Arroyo’s health issues, or her stature as former senator, vice president and president, or of her age (a spry 68 compared to Enrile’s 91), and grant her petition for bail on a nonbailable plunder case, for humanitarian reasons.