DETAINED former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has asked the Supreme Court to order the Sandiganbayan to allow her to post bail in her remaining plunder case which was denied by the anti-graft court.
In a 38-page petition, Arroyo appealed to the SC to reverse the rulings of the Sandiganbayan’s First Division in October last year and last February denying her bail motion in the case involving the P366-million Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office fund anomaly, citing her deteriorating health.
“There is sufficient justification for the Honorable Supreme Court to grant her (Arroyo) bail for medical reasons and on the ground that she is not a flight risk,” the detained leader through lawyer Jose Flaminiano said.
According to Arroyo, the SC had ruled in many cases that detainees are entitled to bail “if their continuous confinement during the pendency of their case would be injurious to their health or endanger their life.”
Given her condition, Arroyo pleaded that hospital detention would not suffice for her recovery and cited an earlier ruling where the high court ruled that hospital arrest “fell short of meeting or accomplishing the humanitarian purpose or reason underlying the doctrine adopted by modern trend of courts’ decisions which permit bail to prisoners, irrespective of the nature and merits of the charge against them, if their continuous confinement during the pendency of their case would be injurious to their health or endanger their life.”
“Petitioner President Arroyo is not asking that she be restored to the pink of health. She is only asking that she be granted provisional liberty in order that she may sufficiently recover from her illnesses and to prevent her health condition from deteriorating,” Arroyo said.
Arroyo has been detained at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center while standing trial for the non-bailable plunder charge due to her cervical spondylosis, a degenerative disease of the bones and cartilage of the neck.
Dr. Antonio Sison, a spine surgeon at VMMC testified that it is not healthy to keep a patient in continued confinement in a medical facility for over a year because it is not conducive and may slow down the healing process.
Sison’s opinion was echoed by Dr. Ernesto Palanca who described the former President as a “suffering sick lady.”
Dr. Martha Nucum, assistant chief medical professional staff of VMMC, and Dr. Celestino Dalisay also issued medical certificates saying Mrs. Arroyo’s rehabilitation does not show significant improvement.
The Sandiganbayan junked Arroyo’s bail motion on the ground that the evidence of her guilt presented by the prosecution is strong.
However, the petitioner pointed out that even assuming that such finding was correct, she is still entitled to bail because her “continued detention has resulted in the impairment of her health” and that she is “demonstrably not a flight risk.”
Arroyo accused the anti-graft court of committing grave abused of discretion when it took the position that “having found evidence against President Arroyo to be strong, it has lost all discretion to grant her bail-never mind that detention is impairing her health; never mind that she is not a flight risk; never mind that the law still presumes her innocent.
“If the sole reason for President Arroyo’s continued detention is that the evidence against her is strong even if she is concededly and demonstrably not a flight risk and despite her poor health, then her continued detention assumes the form of a punishment,” the petition added.
Arroyo is facing a case for plunder in connection with the alleged misuse of P366-million in intelligence funds of the PCSO from 2008 to 2010.