Miriam bucks house arrest for Enrile

MANILA, Philippines - Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago believes granting Senate Minority Leader Juan Ponce Enrile house arrest, while former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo remains under hospital detention, will violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

“That’s already a violation of the equal protection of the law,” she said.

“Why should President Gloria Arroyo, a former president of the Philippines, be granted hospital arrest only while Enrile, who is just a former Senate president, should be granted house arrest?”

Santiago said she sees no proof that Enrile is suffering from pneumonia, which could easily be confused with the common cold.

“Pneumonia mimics a cold,” she said. “So if you are coughing then you could already be placed under house arrest? You might as well just keep on coughing.”

Santiago said if Enrile is allowed house arrest, all elderly inmates would claim that they have pneumonia. “There will be an epidemic of pneumonia in the jails,” she said. “I am certain of that.” 

Santiago said the constitutional principle would be trivialized if one would argue that his right to life includes the right to be taken away from a correctional facility.

“It does not meet the threshold of a possible threat to the life of a person because every person is entitled to life, but not in that sense,” she said.

Santiago said granting an exception to a person on the basis of age is   improper from a legal standpoint.

“How many people of his age have died in jail waiting for their appeals to be decided?” she asked.

“Why are we making an exception for him? If we want persons of that age to stay out of jail, let us have a law, that is the procedure. You don’t ask for an exception for one person in a democracy.”

It is prohibited for the law to seek special treatment for one person alone no matter how ill he might be unless he is at the point of death, Santiago said.

Enrile was recently transferred from the Philippine National Police General Hospital in Camp Crame to the Makati Medical Center after suffering from pneumonia.

Acting Senate Minority Leader Vicente Sotto III has called on his colleagues to support the approval of a resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that the 91-year-old Enrile should be placed under house arrest.