This is a re-posted opinion piece.
In what was a purely coincidental development, South Korea President Lee Myung-bak arrived in our country last Sunday for a three-day state visit. It was obviously not at all a premeditated move on the part of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III to schedule the South Korean leader’s visit at this time when the Philippines would have another former president being sent to jail for high crimes against the people.
Two former presidents of South Korea were actually sent to jail and really did prison time after their conviction of crimes against the State.
The Aquino administration is in the process of bringing former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to jail for allegedly masterminding the poll fraud committed for her administration’s senatorial candidates in the May 2007 elections.
A sitting President of the Philippines enjoys immunity from any suit while in office as provided for in our country’s 1987 Constitution. Mrs. Arroyo joined the company of ex-Philippine presidents who were charged for crimes allegedly committed during their tenure at Malacañang Palace. The first was the late dictator ex-President Ferdinand Marcos who was ousted from office at the end of the EDSA People Power Revolution in February 1986.
P-Noy’s late mother, former President Corazon Aquino, was swept into power after Marcos and his family fled to Hawaii where the late dictator stayed in self-exile. Several cases of ill-gotten wealth and human rights violations were filed against ex-President Marcos but these never prospered in court until his demise on Sept. 28, 1989.
The issue of state burial rites for Marcos reached all the way to the administration of P-Noy. Citing the Filipino human rights victims who still cry for justice for crimes committed during the martial law regime, P-Noy declared that such a state burial for Marcos won’t happen during his watch. The waxed Marcos remains would stay in the refrigerated crypt in his home province in Batac, Ilocos Norte.
Hence, former President Joseph Estrada pejoratively got the distinction of being the first Philippine president charged with and convicted in court of plunder. Refusing to leave the Philippines, the Supreme Court (SC) rendered a landmark ruling on Estrada’s “constructive resignation” in favor of Mrs. Arroyo after EDSA-2 in January 2001.
Three months later, Estrada was charged with the non-bailable crime of plunder before the Sandiganbayan. Estrada was served with a warrant of arrest at his house on Polk Street in Greenhills, San Juan and was immediately hauled off to jail in Camp Crame, Quezon City where he underwent mug shots and fingerprinting.
The Arroyo administration created a special court at the Sandiganbayan that tried and convicted Estrada after the impeachment trial at the Senate was terminated by a walkout of congressmen and private prosecutors. From a short detention in Crame, Estrada and his son, then San Juan Mayor Jinggoy Estrada, as his co-accused in the plunder case, were transferred to a “barbed-wired” detention facility in Sto. Domingo, Laguna.
The Estrada father and son were subsequently placed under “hospital detention” at the Veterans’ Medical Center in Quezon City. Jinggoy was released on bail in 2004 and was later acquitted, enabling him to run and win in the May 2004 elections. Estrada, on the other hand, was allowed to stay in detention at his own rest house in Tanay, Rizal until his plunder conviction on Sept. 12, 2007. Mrs. Arroyo granted Estrada executive pardon on Oct. 25, 2007, enabling him to run anew for public office. Estrada ran but lost to President Aquino in the May 2010 presidential elections.
Elected into office last year, P-Noy created first the Truth Commission to specifically go after the alleged big-time anomalies that ex-President Arroyo committed during her nine years at the Palace. But when the SC junked it as “unconstitutional,” a special joint probe body of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Commission on Elections finally got her to be charged and placed under “hospital arrest.”
Three hours after a case of non-bailable offense of electoral sabotage was filed, the Pasay City Regional Trial Court issued a warrant of arrest for Mrs. Arroyo. The next day, Mrs. Arroyo was booked and her mug shots and finger and palm prints were taken at her hospital bed.
An ailing Mrs. Arroyo has been placed under “hospital arrest” since last Friday at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Global City in Taguig. Mrs. Arroyo is also facing plunder and graft charges still under preliminary investigations before the DOJ and at the Ombudsman.
Out of courtesy to Mrs. Arroyo, she got spared from indignities that Estrada went through. P-Noy reportedly gave verbal instructions to the Justice Secretary to give Mrs. Arroyo the dignity of her office. Mrs. Arroyo, after all, is still an incumbent congresswoman representing her home province of Pampanga.
And while the legal battles were taking place between the lawyers of the Aquino administration and the camp of Mrs. Arroyo, we had a state visitor from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a country known for having sent to jail two of its former presidents who really did their time in prison.
Former South Korean presidents Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo were arrested in late 1995 for their roles in a 1979 mutiny and 1980 massacre and coup, and for amassing huge slush funds while in office. Chun was president from 1980 to 1988, and Roh, from 1988 to 1993. Chun was initially condemned to death, but this sentence was reduced in 1996 to life imprisonment. Roh’s original 22 1/2-year sentence was reduced to 17 years.
The two, however, were subsequently given special pardon and restoration of their civil rights in December 1997. In a demonstration of national reconciliation, President Kim Young Sam and his elected successor, Kim Dae Jung — both former dissidents — agreed to pardon and release the two former military-backed presidents after having been imprisoned for their crimes.
P-Noy has less than five years to let the wheels of justice grind in these cases against ex-President Arroyo. As to whether she would become the country’s first female president to go to jail would depend on the justice system for ex-presidents Philippine-style that would be adopted in her case. Just what kind of justice system it would be, is beginning to unfold.
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By: Marichu A. Villanueva
Source: The Philippine Star, Nov. 23, 2011
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