EDITORIAL - Get-out-of-jail props

Imprisonment can raise anyone’s blood pressure. Not all jailbirds, however, get immediate medical attention in a hospital when their blood pressure spikes.

If the inmate is an impoverished man rounded up ostensibly for playing cara y cruz, he might be rushed to a hospital only if he is already convulsing and looking close to death.

If the person has been arrested for plunder related to billions in anomalous flood control projects when he was the public works secretary, he is rushed ASAP to a hospital for “reactive” hypertension. He is then moved around in a wheelchair.

Medical websites describe reactive hypertension as a temporary, short-lived spike in blood pressure, which can be triggered by salty food, alcohol and emotional stress. People with chronic hypertension stabilize their blood pressure with maintenance medicine. It is not an affliction that keeps them permanently incapable of work or other regular activities.

Yet Manuel Bonoan is invoking hypertension and diabetes to get permission from the Sandiganbayan to spend his detention without bail in a hospital. Just recently returned from travel in the United States, he is now being pushed to court in a wheelchair.

His co-accused, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, who says he may need knee surgery, can afford to walk on his own despite the knee problem.

Bonoan is not the first VIP jailbird to appear in public in a wheelchair or invoke illness. Others have resorted to the same playbook in the past in an effort to get court permission for detention in a hospital or for other forms of special treatment.

Sometimes it worked – as in the case of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who often wore a neck brace and also used a wheelchair in public when she was on trial for plunder after her presidency. The devices miraculously disappeared following her acquittal and release from “hospital arrest.”

There are inmates who are genuinely suffering from serious illness and who deserve hospital confinement. The courts, however, should not allow hospitals to be a refuge for VIP inmates. Health issues are not get-out-of-jail cards to be enjoyed by VIPs.

High blood pressure and diabetes are common afflictions. If jail authorities with their medical teams can’t handle these health problems among inmates, they should just close shop.