Former Philippine president Gloria Arroyo refused to enter a plea yesterday on a graft charge that could see her imprisoned for life, as she appeared in court wheelchair-bound and wearing a neck brace.
Arroyo sat quietly as Judge Efren de la Cruz read the charge that she had plundered US$8.8 million in state lottery funds during her time as president from 2001 to 2010.
One of Arroyo’s lawyers, Ferdinand Topacio, said no plea was entered because her legal team had questioned the legality of charge with the Philippine Supreme Court, which had yet to issue a ruling on the motion.
“This arrest, as we have said before, is illegal and baseless,” Topacio told reporters. “It is a right of anyone accused not to enter a plea.”
The Supreme Court is the highest judicial body in the country.
However, De la Cruz entered a “not guilty” on Arroyo’s behalf and asked the defense and prosecution to return on Dec. 3 for a preliminary session during which both sides will present their list of witnesses.
Arroyo ended her time in power as one of the Philippine’s most unpopular presidents amid allegations she had cheated to win elections, embraced feared warlords as allies and was involved in widespread corruption.
Her successor, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, won a landslide election after vowing to fight corruption and to prosecute Arroyo.
Government prosecutors charged Arroyo with vote fraud in November last year for allegedly rigging the 2007 Philippine senatorial vote.
She spent most of the next eight months under detention at a military hospital, where she was treated for a spinal disease that requires her to wear a neck brace.
However, Arroyo won bail in July this year, with the court saying the case against her was weak.
She was rearrested early this month on the charge of conspiring to defraud the state lottery to finance an election campaign and could face life in jail if found guilty.
Arroyo has been allowed to remain at the same military hospital since being hit with the vote fraud charge.
She was placed on intensive care this month to clear a blockage that prevented oxygen supply to her heart. She is now recovering from that condition.
Arroyo is also facing a third graft charge involving a deal with a Chinese telecommunications firm in which her husband allegedly received kickbacks in exchange for her approving a national Internet broadband network.
Court resolutions to these cases are expected to drag for years in the Philippine’s slow justice system.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema