Ex-Quezon gov willing to face raps in US

Former Quezon governor Eduardo Rodriguez and his wife have volunteered to go the United States on their own accord to face their accusers in a 16-year-old insurance fraud case involving $150,000, pending before a California court.

Rodriguez and his wife, Imelda, who were ordered arrested by the Department of Justice in May last year, only a month after it filed an extradition case against the couple, were subsequently released after the Manila Regional Trial Court granted them the right to bail.

Instead of awaiting the outcome of the court hearings, which, the Rodriguezes claim to be, by its "factual backdrop," the same case decided by the Supreme Court as early as July 23, 1996, the couple petitioned the Philippine government to allow them to personally take up their case where it had originated — California, USA — to "clear (our) names, once and for all."

To pave the way for their US trip, the Rodriguezes have requested the government to intercede on their behalf for the reduction of the "outrageously excessive" bail of $2 million each to an amount they can afford.

Through their legal counsel, lawyer Efren Dizon, the Rodriguezes said such an excessive bail is "unreasonable and in violation of (our) human, constitutional and statutory rights."

The Rodriguezes had claimed that they were not "perpetrators," but "victims" of the crime imputed on them 15 years ago, as part of the persecution of the Rodriguezes by the Marcos regime to stop their late father, Don Filemon Rodriguez, from publishing the book Marcos Regime — Rape of the Nation.