Arroyo rose and fell on lawyers' strategy

Gloria Arroyo’s lawyers are all over the media, decrying the rapidness of her hospital arrest last Friday. Allegedly a “P-Noy Express,” referring to Noynoy Aquino’s presidential powers, had railroaded events to thwart Arroyo’s flight from Manila. The ploy supposedly included manipulating independent government entities to do Malacañang’s bidding. Aquino, so they say, pulled it all off while attending the ASEAN summit in Bali, Indonesia.

Everything happened in a day, the lawyers moan. Friday morning, election commissioners met in hurried en banc to evaluate findings of Arroyo’s poll rigging in 2007. Purportedly two of the seven officials received only then copies of the Comelec-Department of Justice joint report, so could not make a proper judgment. The five others voted to file in court right away a complaint for election sabotage. Supposedly Arroyo was not notified, so could not object or appeal.

The Pasay City regional trial court judge to whom the case was raffled that noon allegedly read the voluminous charge sheet in record time. By 4 p.m. he determined probable cause of Arroyo’s conspiracy in the poll cheating, and issued an arrest warrant. This, the lawyers cry, gave them no time to question the ruling. And since it was only an hour before closing of offices for the weekend, they had no choice but to await inevitable arrest in Arroyo’s St Luke’s Hospital suite.

Even then, the rap was filed in the wrong venue, the lawyers add. Since Arroyo was a government official — President — at the time of the stated offense, it should have been filed with the Ombudsman, not an RTC. The Ombudsman would then have conducted a case review and, if warranted, elevated the case to the Sandiganbayan. In the meantime, of course, Arroyo would have been able to fly to Singapore, America and Europe for supposed urgent medical treatment — and political conferences.

Amado Valdez, president of the association of law school deans, has a different take. The Comelec, he says, was within its rights to hold an immediate en banc on the poll rigging report. The matter involved election sabotage, a non-bailable heinous offense like murder, plunder and kidnapping. Given the hot news reports of Arroyo’s impending departure, the commissioners had the duty to decide right away, lest they let a potential indictee escape justice. Even if Arroyo was not on the verge of flight, Valdez adds, they had the responsibility to both the accusers and the accused to render swift judgment.

Solicitor General Jose Anselmo Cadiz shares what he heard of the Comelec events. Reportedly the two commissioners who did not participate in the en banc voting had arrived late. Moreover, the poll body could not inform Arroyo of its 5-2 ruling because the latter had snubbed the inquiry. Last month the Comelec-DOJ joint panel gave Arroyo (and husband Mike) ten days to refute witnesses’ allegations. They chose to ignore the proceedings. “You rise and fall on your legal strategy; they lost by default,” Cadiz chides Arroyo’s counsels. (The Comelec had exonerated Mike.)

For that same default, Cadiz says, it must have become easy for Pasay RTC Judge Jesus Mupas to determine probable cause. Because Arroyo had boycotted the inquiry, all the charge sheet contained were un-refuted allegations against her. About Mupas’s supposed haste, Cadiz says the case is so historic that any lawyer would read it like a riveting suspense novel. The issuance of an arrest warrant was mandatory upon determining probable cause. The police’s speedy serving of the warrant was equally mandatory, even on a weekend. Only in offenses that carry less than six years’ imprisonment is a weekend serving barred by court rules. The warrant servers were within their authority to decide if the arrestee should be kept in jail or hospital, Cadiz says. Besides, President Aquino had given instructions to treat his predecessor justly.

Cadiz cautions the Arroyo camp against reading malevolence in the speed of the Comelec and RTC actions. He reminds them that the Supreme Court had been fast as well in restraining Justice Sec. Leila de Lima’s travel ban on Arroyo, and the lawyers had hailed it. “So why are they now questioning the speedy decisions of other judicial bodies?”

About the Pasay RTC being the wrong case venue, Cadiz disagrees. Although the offense allegedly was committed while Arroyo was in public office, sabotaging elections had nothing to do with her official functions. Hence, the filing was in a court that had jurisdiction over heinous crimes. Cadiz differentiates Arroyo’s case from usual graft cases filed with the Ombudsman against public officials. The latter have the duty, for instance, to guard the public coffers; if they fail to do so by commission or omission, then the Ombudsman and the Sandiganbayan have jurisdiction over them.

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Last weekend I found myself, like my nieces and nephews, thoroughly enjoying The Little Mermaid at the Meralco Theater, Pasig. Everything about it — choreography, singing, acting, dialogues, plot and sub-plots, orchestra, sets, costumes, props, special effects, lights — made for great musicale. After presenting recently Next to Normal, Aida and In the Heights, Bobby Garcia and Chari Arespacochaga’s Atlantis Productions does it again.

The Manila staging of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic, as an off-Broadway version of Disney’s hit, runs till Dec. 11. Kids, bring your olds. Singing champions Rachelle Ann Go and Erik Santos debut in professional theater as Ariel and Prince Eric. Watch out too for the performances of stage veterans Calvin Millado as King Triton, Jinky Llamanzares as Ursula, and (my, ehem, inaanak) OJ Mariano as Sebastian.

For inquiries call (02) 8927978, 8401187, or visit www.atlantisproductionsinc.com.

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ, (882-AM).

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