The lawyer for former Philippine president Gloria Arroyo yesterday challenged a court’s jurisdiction to order her arrest on vote-rigging charges as she spent a second day under police guard in hospital.
The ailing 64-year-old faces a possible life sentence if convicted by the lower court in Manila, after a tumultuous week in which the government went head-to-head with the Philippine Supreme Court to stop her leaving the country.
The lower court ordered Arroyo’s arrest on Friday after the government filed charges that she ordered 2007 senatorial elections rigged to ensure her allies won, alleging she conspired with a feared local warlord to tamper with the vote.
The arrest was the culmination of a campaign by Philippine President Benigno Aquino III to hold Arroyo to account for alleged corruption, but her lawyers said yesterday she would continue a legal battle to invalidate the charges against her.
Lawyer Raul Lambino said the lower court would hear a motion on tomorrow to lift the arrest warrant on the grounds that the criminal suit should have been filed elsewhere.
“We feel that there has been a violation of due process when they railroaded this case and filed the information at a wrong court,” he told ABS-CBN television.
The Arroyo camp earlier suggested the case should be dealt with by a special court, called Sandiganbayan, which handles cases involving public officials.
“We have already filed our corresponding motions questioning the jurisdiction of the regional trial court,” Lambino said. “The court should not have issued a warrant of arrest.”
A second lawyer from the Arroyo camp, Ferdinand Topacio, said he would also ask the Supreme Court tomorrow to declare illegal the work of an investigative body which gathered the evidence for the criminal charge against the former president.
Once that is achieved, the arrest warrant would lose its legal basis, he told reporters outside the hospital where Arroyo was under police guard.
“She was treated with respect and dignity [during the arrest], but we only wished they respected her rights under the constitution,” Topacio said.
Both lawyers said that Arroyo, who has undergone three unsuccessful spinal surgeries this year for a rare bone disease, was holding up relatively well after she was arrested in her hospital bed.
However, Topacio said: “The doctors said she should not yet leave the hospital. She’s under additional strain.”
A spokesperson for Aquino, who is on the Indonesian island of Bali for the ASEAN summit, said that the president would not -object to Arroyo remaining in hospital rather than going to jail if her lawyers sought a court ruling to that effect.
“If they do that, we will not object,” presidential spokesperson Ricky Carandang said. He added that Aquino had missed a summit gala dinner on Friday evening because he was constantly on the telephone to officials in Manila as events unfolded.
The lawyers said police were scheduled to take Arroyo’s fingerprints and mugshot ahead of a possible trial, and Topacio said they had appealed to police and the court not to release the photograph to the public.
“Let’s treat the former president with the dignity due her as a former head of state ... Let’s not further humiliate her, considering that she’s suffering from an ailment,” he said.
Arroyo, the country’s second female president, would also be its second leader to stand trial. Her predecessor and former Philippine Joseph Estrada was convicted of plunder in 2007, but pardoned by Arroyo 40 days later.
Arroyo arrived at Manila airport on Tuesday last week, in a wheelchair and looking frail, saying she was seeking to travel overseas for medical treatment after the Supreme Court overturned a government ban on her leaving the country.
The Supreme Court ruled she should be allowed to travel because she had not yet been charged with any crime, but in a high-stakes political standoff, the government defied the court and ordered immigration authorities to stop Arroyo from leaving the country, while racing to file charges against her.
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