"What did the honorable Pasay court have to say about Mrs. Arroyo?"
"What did the honorable Pasay court have to say about Mrs. Arroyo?"
Last week marked the demise of the last criminal case pending against former President and current Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, when a Pasay court dismissed the electoral fraud case filed against her in connection with the 2007 midterm polls.
FPSGMA (her honorific keeps getting longer) had been charged with inciting her leaders in Maguindanao to commit fraud in 2007, just because she had issued the usual campaign pep talk at a dinner meeting in the Palace—no different from what any politician does at a rally, or any coach does before a big game.
For this, she was pilloried by a PNoy administration that would stop at nothing to put her behind bars. But what did the honorable Pasay court have to say about this?
“Not one [witness], however, was able to establish any element of conspiracy with respect to [Arroyo]. Not one of them mentioned [Arroyo], and no one produced any document directly or even indirectly connecting [Arroyo] to the crime charged.”
Predictably, this won’t impress the dwindling ranks of professional Arroyo haters—paid or otherwise—for whom “the rule of law” refers only to court decisions that suit them. But if they’re going to dredge up old wives’ tales from the past, we’ll remind our reader that this election fraud case is very similar in its utter lack of evidence to the PCSO plunder case that allowed PNoy to keep Mrs Arroyo behind bars for over five years.
In that one, it may be recalled that the only shred of evidence adduced against her was her marginal note, saying “OK,” scribbled on a PCSO board resolution concerning the release of the funds in question. This was a purely ministerial function, and in fact she might even have been charged for dereliction of duty if she hadn’t done it.
As for the electoral fraud case, it’s been widely rumored that the murder cases filed against the Ampatuan family after the Maguindanao massacre of 2009 languished for so long under PNoy, in part because his administration wanted to preserve the credibility of former Maguindanao provincial administrator Norie Unas, one of those implicated in the massacre as well as being the sole witness against Mrs Arroyo.
Would this be the first time that massacre victims received no justice under PNoy, whether because of ulterior agendas, hard-heartedness, or plain ineptitude?
After the Luneta hostage incident, Mamasapano, or the way victims of disasters like Yolanda were neglected, the answer seems clear. And if you go farther back—to the complicity of his father Ninoy in resurrecting the communist insurgency in the sixties, or the massacre of Hacienda Luisita farmers under his mother Cory in the eighties—the answer might even seem, well, genetic.
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The ups and downs of local politics can be downright dizzying. From the depths of “political persecution” under PNoy—according to the UN Human Rights Commission no less, though I doubt that the yellowtards will use this quotation a lot—Mrs. Arroyo is now being accused of overweening political influence, even by academics who really should know better.
I chanced across this CNN Philippines story last week where a senior faculty member at the UST made the following statements, to the best of my paraphrasing:
In the wake of Mrs Arroyo’s rise to the speakership as well as recent rows between certain members of the House and the Cabinet, the good professor claimed that the President “has no control of things.” That’s absurd, unless you define “control” to mean absolute, 100 percent obedience.
One evidence cited was the recent disagreement over cash-based vs obligation-based budgeting between the House leadership and Budget Secretary Diokno. But nobody knows what Duterte himself thinks about this issue. And Diokno’s visceral distaste for Mrs. Arroyo likely owes a lot more to the years he spent serving former President Erap, who at least has had the grace to mend fences with her and move on.
Another evidence cited was the fate of the Road Board. The House earlier wanted to abolish this controversial body under former Speaker Alvarez, then changed its mind under Arroyo, then changed its mind back again after Duterte himself said he wanted the Road Board gone. So if the final decision went against Arroyo, how does this point to her undue influence?
What the Speaker will in fact boast about is that, on her watch, in less than six months, she was able to pass the entirety of Duterte’s legislative agenda through the House. That kind of partnership between Executive and Legislative, to most people, would be the definition of how government ought to work. And with the President’s ratings now bouncing back to “Very Good” as the old year bows out, it’s a partnership that makes a lot of political sense as well to its principals.
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Philadelphia—In an unseasonably warm spell in this “city of brotherly love,” I’m slowly recovering from the head and chest cold that kept me from writing my Christmas piece for this paper. New Year’s Day is no time to slack off, after all, even as Marians everywhere are also enjoined to celebrate the Solemnity of the Mother of God.
From here, my wife and I are off to Mexico City on a long-deferred pilgrimage to the Minor Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the most visited pilgrimage site in the Catholic world. This will be specially meaningful for me because of all the years I spent at the BDO office chapel named in her honor, where I gradually progressed from attending daily Mass to entering into an active and immensely fulfilling Church ministry today.
I wish my readers a happy and prosperous new year to everyone!
Readers can write me at [email protected].