Arroyos to question probe panel

MANILA, Philippines - Former first gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo will ask the Supreme Court today to declare the joint Department of Justice (DOJ)-Commission on Elections (Comelec) investigation panel unconstitutional and suspend all its recommendations and findings that led to the arrest of his wife, former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, last Friday.

Lawyer Ferdinand Topacio said the legal team of Arroyo decided to file a supplemental petition with a “very urgent motion” for the issuance of a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the DOJ-Comelec panel that recommended the filing of charges of electoral sabotage against Mrs. Arroyo.

“We will reveal before the Supreme Court (SC) the irregularities committed against the Arroyos last Friday... in effect we are praying for the High Court to issue the TRO to negate the effects of the filing of the criminal charges and the warrant of arrest against the former president,” Topacio said.

The joint DOJ-Comelec committee tasked to investigate the allegations of cheating in the 2004 and 2007 polls recommended the filing of charges of electoral sabotage against Mrs. Arroyo, along with former elections chief Benjamin Abalos, former Maguindanao election supervisor Lintang Bedol, and former Maguindanao governor Andal Ampatuan Sr. last Friday.

Arroyo, on the other hand, was not included for lack of evidence.

The committee’s resolution was forwarded to the Pasay City Hall of Justice and was raffled off to Judge Jesus Mupas of Pasay Regional Trial Court Branch 112 before noon Friday.

Mupas then issued an arrest warrant, which was served on Mrs. Arroyo at the St. Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig City that evening.

The former president was subsequently placed under the custody of the Southern Police District which took her mug shots and fingerprints the following day.



Topacio said these “supervening events” would be the basis of their supplemental motion.

Topacio said the electoral sabotage case filed against Mrs. Arroyo had been “railroaded.”

Through Topacio, Arroyo described the panel as “a kangaroo court designed with the sole purpose of persecuting the former first gentleman and his ailing wife.”

Arroyo also said the order creating the DOJ-Comelec panel should be declared null and void considering that Justice Secretary Leila de Lima and Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. had acted as lawyers for Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, one of the complainants in the electoral fraud case against the Arroyos in his election protest.

Arroyo noted Brillantes also acted as the lawyer for the late actor Fernando Poe Jr., who lost to his wife in the 2004 presidential elections.

Back to square one

The Comelec had denied allegations that the joint panel resolution that led to the arrest of Mrs. Arroyo had been railroaded.

Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento noted the Arroyos are set to question before the SC the constitutionality of the joint panel that recommended the filing of the charges.

Sarmiento though remained confident that the legality of the joint panel, created under Republic Act 9369, would be upheld by the SC.

“So we can say that we acted with legal support,” he said.

Sarmiento, however, also saw the possibility that the SC might declare otherwise.

If this occurs, Sarmiento said the poll body has the option to conduct an investigation against Mrs. Arroyo on its own.

“It won’t be back to square one because we already have the sworn statement of the witnesses, so there is already a basis even without the DOJ,” he added.

Sarmiento admitted that Mrs. Arroyo could be out of detention once the SC declares the joint panel unconstitutional.

“If the Supreme Court would rule that the creation of the Comelec-DOJ joint panel is illegal or unconstitutional the effect might be the nullification of the arrest warrant,” Sarmiento said.

SC spokesman Midas Marquez also said that if the SC rules in favor of the Arroyos, then the proceedings as well as the recommendations of the joint panel that became the basis of the filing the electoral sabotage complaint against the former president “may be declared void ab initio.”

“If that panel is adjudged as unconstitutional then of course all the proceedings conducted by that panel would have to be nullified but again we have to wait for the decision of the Court,” he said.

Contempt and disbarment

Topacio added they would also ask the SC to declare De Lima in contempt for defying the temporary restraining order (TRO) that allowed the Arroyos to leave the country last Tuesday.

He said they would also seek the disbarment of De Lima and presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda.

Topacio said several groups of lawyers are also set to join them in questioning the defiance of the executive branch of the TRO.

“They (De Lima and Lacierda) are lawyers. They are supposed to be officers of the court. They owe their loyalty not to Malacañang but to the rule of law,” Topacio told reporters.

He said Lacierda should be included since he openly supported De Lima.

The SC had denied the motion for reconsideration filed by De Lima, through the Office of the Solicitor General, which sought the recall of the TRO on watchlist order that prevented the Arroyos from leaving the country last Tuesday.

However, the filing of the electoral sabotage charges and the issuance of the arrest warrant by the Pasay City court against Rep. Arroyo superseded the TRO.

House Minority Leader Edcel Lagman questioned what he described as the “precipitate” issuance of a warrant of arrest for Mrs. Arroyo.

“With admittedly eight volumes of evidence, affidavits and documents submitted to the Pasay City (court), it would be a Herculean task to wade through the voluminous records and would be physically impossible for a judge to determine probable cause in less than four hours to justify the issuance of a warrant of arrest,” Lagman said.

“The inordinate and precipitate haste in the issuance of the warrant of arrest brazenly violates Section 14 of the Bill of Rights (of the Constitution),” he said.

Government lawyers insisted there was nothing irregular in the issuance of the warrant considering the repeated attempts of the Arroyos to leave the country.

But Lagman said the Bill of Rights also mandates that “no search warrant or warrant of arrest shall be issued except upon probable cause to be determined personally by the judge after examination under oath or affirmation of the complainant and the witnesses he may produce”.

Under the Rules of Court, Lagman said the judge must “personally evaluate the resolution of the prosecutor and its supporting evidence before deciding whether to issue a warrant of arrest based on his personal determination of the evidence on the existence or non-existence of probable cause.”

“Settled is the jurisprudence that what the judge is never allowed to do is to follow blindly the prosecutor’s bare certification as to the existence of probable cause. Much more is required by the constitutional provision,” he added.

On the other hand, Sen. Francis Pangilinan asserted the right to travel being invoked by the Arroyos is a “one-dimensional” angle that attempts to keep the larger issues of accountability and true justice away from public debate.

“To view the raging controversy only from the issue of the ‘right to travel’ alone is to be one-dimensional and will definitely lead us to ignore all the other cases wherein the Supreme Court voted repeatedly to favor the interest of the Arroyos,” Pangilinan said.

Pangilinan expressed the view that one cannot just use the right to travel of a citizen to argue Mrs. Arroyo’s case.

“It is my view that one cannot look at the TRO controversy involving Gloria and Mike Arroyo simply as a textbook case in constitutional law,” he said.

Sen. Pimentel, for his part, defended De Lima in her efforts to pursue the prosecution of the Arroyos.

“Secretary De Lima was well within her mandate and prerogative as head of the Justice department to insist that the right to travel is not absolute. Even before the Supreme Court issued its TRO, there were already six plunder complaints filed against Arroyo with the Office of the Ombudsman and another complaint for electoral sabotage with the DOJ and the Comelec,” Pimentel said.

“To have allowed Arroyo to leave for abroad would have been tantamount to abdicating Secretary De Lima’s duty to uphold the rule of law in the country,” he added.

Aia Balagtas See, Philippine Star