Arresting Gloria

MANILA
High tension and higher drama gripped the Philippines on the week of Nov. 13-19 as two opposing political sides raced to outwit each other in the continuing saga of one Gloria Arroyo.
Mrs. Arroyo has been treading burning coals since leaving office in July 2010 as her successor, President Benigno Aquino III, goes after her for crimes allegedly committed against the Filipino people. Six cases, mainly for plunder, have been lodged against her. The last case, for electoral sabotage, would lead to her arrest.
Aquino ran for President in 2010 on a platform of massive government reform and prosecuting officials who had abused their authority. The main target was Gloria Arroyo.
It’s been 16 months or so after Aquino was voted overwhelmingly into office. Continuing to vow reforms and legal action against corrupt officials, Aquino has been accused by impatient political observers for being slow in taking Arroyo to court for her alleged crimes. On the week of Nov. 14, things took a dramatic turn.
Mr. Aquino had been informing the public that Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers have been working on the cases against Mrs. Arroyo. Still, many people, including politicians who had belonged to the powerless minority before, were impatient. They’ve accused Aquino of lacking drive and even being incompetent as the said cases against Arroyo seemed to be going nowhere.
Meanwhile, Arroyo had fallen ill, hobbled by a spinal ailment that, according to her spokespeople, is serious and potentially life-threatening. She underwent major surgery three times.
And later she was said to need treatment and care abroad. But, a travel ban clamped on her by the Justice Department barred her from leaving the country. A tug of war soon ensued.
Arroyo, an imperious President in her time, had to humble her to seek DOJ permission to seek treatment from doctors abroad. The DOJ wouldn’t let her. She ran to the Supreme Court, the final arbiter of everything legal, which told the DOJ, through a “temporary restraining order” (TRO), to back off and let Mrs. Arroyo travel abroad for medical attention.
The Justice Department, led by its feisty head, Secretary Leila de Lima, wouldn’t budge an inch. De Lima contended her “hold-departure order,” the ban against Arroyo, stays, and the Supreme Court’s TRO couldn’t be carried out.
The drama then began.
Perhaps with the heat getting to be too hot for comfort, Arroyo made her bid to leave the country and evade the threat of jail. The electoral sabotage charge is non-bailable and, once filed in court, would open Arroyo to the real possibility of being thrown in prison pronto. Non-bailable means the accused cannot post bail and, therefore, is left with no choice but to be locked up in jail while the case is being heard.
Tension was building up. Then, on Tuesday, Nov. 15, the Supreme Court, packed by justices appointed by Mrs. Arroyo, handed down a ruling allowing her to travel abroad. The high Court is headed by the most controversial of Arroyo’s appointees, Chief Justice Renato Corona, once her spokesman and chief legal counsel.
Even before the justices’ signatures on the ruling had dried, Arroyo had booked a flight to Singapore (several bookings, actually). Her bags were packed and ready to go.
But the redoubtable de Lima wouldn’t let that happen. Ordering the Bureau of Immigration, she closed the doors and forbade Arroyo’s departure, in seeming defiance of the Supreme Court, an act that sent shivers down the spine of the country’s lawyers. De Lima had opened herself to a citation of contempt by the Court, which could earn her a fine and even imprisonment.
But no matter, de Lima threw caution to the winds and stood her ground.
In a dramatic and tension-filled spectacle, a wheelchair-bound Arroyo arrived at the international airport on the evening of Nov. 15, to board her flight to Singapore, and later to other points across the globe to rendezvous with her doctors.
In yet another stroke of coincidence, the airport is ironically named after President Aquino’s father, the murdered (allegedly upon orders of the then-dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the elder Aquino’s arch enemy) Benigno (“Ninoy”) Aquino.
The media, in full force, nearly trampled the hapless Arroyo to death in their usually frenzied news coverage. Poor Mrs. Arroyo, she looked pitiful as she tried to put a desperate smile on her sad face throughout the raucous scene.
Immigration agents stood their ground at their usually humdrum counters as Arroyo checked in for an instantly precious rubber stamp for foreign travel. That was amazing in itself because the lowly bureaucrats were defying the once all-powerful little wonder, the hot-tempered Gloria Arroyo, who once made military generals tremble in their boots as she ordered them around. The immigration agents were risking their jobs as they obeyed the orders of their boss, the Justice Secretary, instead of letting the formerly imperious Mrs. Arroyo pass through the immigration portal and go on indefinite freedom.
After the jostling and pleading, the government’s enforcers won out, leaving Mrs. Arroyo’s spokespeople crying to the media as if that would change things in their favor.
Mrs. Arroyo, defeated even as she had with her the Supreme Court’s order to let her pass, was taken back to hospital in the same ambulance that ferried her in to the airport. The battle would have to wait another day.
As Mrs. Arroyo lay resting at the hospital after her fatiguing bout with first, the press frenzy and, later, with her encounter at the immigration counter, her lawyers busied themselves in search of judicial relief. They pleaded again with the Supreme Court to order the government to permit their client to travel. And again, the high Court obliged.
But, the government had something (an ace?) up its sleeve. A joint DOJ-Commission on Elections (Comelec) panel had been looking into an electoral sabotage charge against Arroyo for allegedly rigging senatorial elections in 2007.
Remember that no case had been officially filed in court against Arroyo and, therefore, no legal obstacle could bar her from traveling, a citizen’s right that is guaranteed by the Constitution. This citizen’s right explains the Supreme Court’s order nullifying the government travel ban against Arroyo.
But a non-bailable case filed against Arroyo would almost automatically put her in jail and, obviously, frustrate her plans to travel abroad to surrender herself to the care of foreign doctors.
Having sufficiently reinvigorated herself for another attempt at going to the airport for foreign travel, Mrs. Arroyo again booked a flight to leave on Friday, Nov. 18. She was all set to go again. Her departure now seemed a foregone conclusion.
But no such luck.
On the morning of Nov. 18, the Comelec approved the filing of the non-bailable case of electoral sabotage against Arroyo and some others. The filing effectively trumped the Supreme Court’s TRO allowing Arroyo to travel because of the non-bailable nature of the electoral sabotage case. The judge before whom the case was filed issued a warrant for the arrest of Mrs. Arroyo, putting her travel plans on indefinite hold.
As of press time, Gloria Arroyo had been fingerprinted and mug shots of her taken as the police do when booking an accused. She is still at the hospital and the government has stated that they would not object if Arroyo pleaded the court for “hospital” or “house” arrest instead of being thrown in jail. President Aquino has ordered everyone under his command to treat Arroyo with the respect to which a former head of state is entitled.
(At press time, Mrs. Arroyo was still at the posh St. Luke’s Medical Center in suburban Manila, under police guard. By the time you’re reading this, it’s likely that the judge hearing the electoral sabotage case will have decided whether to let the former President go on indefinite hospital arrest or be transferred to a regular detention cell.)
The nail-biting tension of the week of Nov. 13-19 has subsided. But the saga of Gloria Arroyo still has a long way to go. Things don’t end here. Many, many developments will come to pass.
This last episode is only the latest in the political and personal life of a woman who had in her hands the golden opportunity and privilege to become a great President. I’ve written before that it’s a puzzling question why Mrs. Arroyo took the road that brought her to where she is. She could have been hailed as a nation-saver. She had a once-in-a-lifetime chance. But she blew it.