DFA urged: Don’t cancel Revilla’s passport

MANILA, Philippines - The camp of Sen. Ramon Revilla Jr. is urging the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to reject the Department of Justice (DOJ)’s request for the cancellation of his passport, saying there is no justification for him to be barred from leaving the country despite his being linked to the pork barrel scam.

“Under the circumstances, there is no reason for our client to flee the country. More so, if the fact is considered, that our client is a duly elected and sitting Senator of the Republic of the Philippines, a respected movie actor and TV personality, and most of all, a loving and responsible family man,” Revilla’s lawyers led by Joel Bodegon said in a seven-page comment.

Bodegon also cited Revilla’s right to travel as protected under the 1987 Constitution.

He also branded as politically motivated the plunder complaint filed by the DOJ before the Office of the Ombudsman against Revilla and 36 others.

“Politically motivated as it is, and founded on hearsay and falsified documentary evidence, the case of plunder that the DOJ insists to prosecute before the Sandiganbayan is not reason enough to drive our client to flight,” the comment read.

The DOJ also wants the DFA to cancel the passports of Senate Minority Leader Juan Ponce Enrile and Sen. Jinggoy Estrada as well as the other personalities linked to the pork barrel scam.

“The DOJ is gravely mistaken. There is no available ground to cancel or withdraw our client’s passport under the facts and the current Philippine regime of law,” the letter read.

Revilla’s lawyers also rejected the DOJ’s invoking the 2011-2016 National Security Policy Act of the Philippines to support its request to the DFA.

“For sure, should your Honorable Office cancel our client’s passport on the basis of his being a ‘national security risk’ as insisted on by the DOJ, such action is tantamount to your honorable office concluding, without any judicial proceedings and in grave violation of the presumption of innocence, that our client is guilty of graft and corruption or the crime of plunder,” the lawyers said.

Revilla’s lawyers stressed that “the presumption of innocence constitutionally guaranteed to every individual is forever of primary importance, and should not be trampled upon by the government.”

They said Revilla “is not a fugitive from justice, nor has he been convicted of any criminal offense. He did not obtain his passport fraudulently, neither has his passport been tampered with.” 

“To top it all, our client denies any criminal involvement in the crime of plunder that the DOJ wants him prosecuted before the Sandiganbayan,” they said.

They added that neither the 1987 Constitution nor any Philippine law or jurisprudence equates the crimes of plunder or graft and corruption to national security.

“From the beginning the so-called PDAF scam hit the media and there were insinuations that he was somehow involved, our client immediately declared that he had nothing to do with the reported scam,” the petition read.

“What pains our client is the way the DOJ and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) treated him. The DOJ and the NBI chose to coddle the whistle-blowers, who openly confessed as the ones who falsified the documents for them to dip their hands into the funds of the PDAF allocations of lawmakers,” it added.

The Revilla camp also branded as “self-serving” the testimonies of the whistle-blowers.

“Worse, the DOJ and the NBI want to hold our client liable for funds of the PDAF that the whistle-blowers themselves confessed to have stolen,” they said.