Estrada lawyers question plunder law

Lawyers for ousted President Joseph Estrada questioned yesterday the constitutionality of the plunder law that he helped enact as senator in 1991 and which is now being used to prosecute him.

The 15-member Supreme Court started hearing arguments from both sides on the issue crucial to the government’s corruption case against Estrada.

Before Estrada’s trial starts at the Sandiganbayan on Oct. 1, the tribunal is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the plunder law.

UP College of Law Dean Pacifico Agabin, a lawyer for Estrada, told the tribunal the law is "unconstitutionally vague," depriving Estrada of the basic right to know clearly the charges against him.

"The legislature did not specifically provide for the intent," he said. "Congress tried to remove the criminal intent. The words maliciously, feloniously, knowingly, willfully, etc. were absent. There’s no room to interpret it in that manner."

Agabin said the plunder law could be used to "inflict injustice, political persecution or extortion" as it had given government prosecutors a "wide and unlimited" discretion.

"It’s a legal ambiguity," he said. "We beseech (the justices) to look beyond the technical aspects. This goes beyond technicalities. This law disguises as a rule of evidence. It strikes at the fundamental law and justice."

However, Solicitor General Simeon Marcelo said it was ironic that Estrada is trying to discredit the plunder law which he voted for in 1991 as a senator.

"He’s now questioning it because it jeopardizes his liberty," he said.

Estrada told the Associated Press yesterday he voted in favor of the law because he belonged to the political party that introduced and supported it in Congress.

"I’m so depressed," he said in a telephone interview from his suite at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC) in Quezon City. "I have been suffering here for five months already because of all these charges that were packaged together so they could come up with a plunder charge. It is a great injustice to me."

As the oral arguments started, anti-riot police pushed away about 50,000 pro-Estrada demonstrators who staged a rally that clogged traffic at Taft Avenue and Padre Faura street near the Supreme Court in Ermita.

Estrada’s supporters demanded that the ousted President be released from detention at the VMMC.

Shouting "Palayain si Erap (Free Erap)!" the rallyists, who had come from various parts of Luzon and Metro Manila, said they could no longer allow the government’s and the so-called "civil society’s" gross violation of the Constitution and the law.

Opposition spokesman Jesus Crispin Remulla said they have taken to the streets because they could no longer allow injustice to rule Philippine society.

Remulla said Estrada supporters are forming a mass-based group to call for the freeing of the jailed President, whom the government has accused of graft and corruption, apart from plunder.

The huge turnout of pro-Estrada rallyists yesterday belied the government’s claim that the opposition is fragmented and already lacking the support of the masses, he added.

Participants in the rally were: the People’s Movement Against Poverty, Union of the Masses for Democracy and Justice, the Kabataan ng Masa, and the Alliance of Civil Liberties Advocates for Good Governance.

Meanwhile, the Sandiganbayan rejected yesterday Estrada’s motion for a trial by assessor on the ground that this right is no longer found in the present Rules of Court.

"By settled jurisprudence, it is even more imperative for this Court to decline to allow trial by assessor in the absence of any statutory basis," read the seven-page ruling penned by Associate Justice Teresita de Castro.

Last September 18, Estrada through his lawyer, former senator Rene Saguisag, asked the Sandiganbayan’s third division chaired by Associate Justice Anacleto Badoy to allow him a trial by assessor.

Saguisag said trial by assessor is a form of jury trial, which is a right granted under the Constitution of the United States to anyone facing charges in court.

The defense was forced to demand such a trial for Estrada because his trial for plunder had been "prematurely" set for October 1, he added.

De Castro said: "Given the absence of any provision on trial by assessor in the present Rules of Court which is made applicable to the Sandiganbayan and the injunction to the Sandiganbayan not to promulgate its own rules of procedure, the Sandiganbayan has no authority nor discretion to allow trial by assessor in this case or in any other case."

In another development, Ombudsman Aniano Desierto said the prosecution will defer the presentation of former Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis "Chavit" Singson as witness against Estrada, pending the anti-graft court’s resolution on the defense motion to implead Singson. – With reports from Jose Aravilla