Erap solution lies only in law

Alhough speaking anonymously, a renowned jurist states what’s in everyone’s mind: "Is there anything in intelligence reports that should so worry our political leaders about Joseph Estrada? Can he really rouse his loyalists into another rampage, or can he only try? Maybe they’re seeing shadows where there are none."

The jurist, like many others, has had enough. Security officials keep assuring there’s nothing to worry about. Presidential spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao has given an update that while Erap’s agitators are indeed offering would-be rioters P500 each for a reprise of last year’s EDSA Shrine takeover, nobody’s biting. Police forces are on usual alert. Businessmen, usually the first to take tail when trouble brews, are going about their daily trading in stocks, currencies and goods. Yet Speaker Jose de Venecia is talking about defusing a political tension so big it needs an extralegal solution of exile.

De Venecia caught himself in the nick of time, though. When the story broke that he met with Erap loyalist senators Blas Ople, Ed Angara and Aquilino Pimentel to discuss the exile plan, his own political allies asked him what the hell he was doing. They couldn’t believe that Erap’s tantrums of firing all his defense lawyers and accusing the judiciary of rushing to convict him of plunder would fire up his followers enough to assault Malacañang. Things didn’t look that way to Senate President Franklin Drilon, who deliberately had avoided the meeting. Most of them were inclined to heed the counsel of retired Senate President Jovito Salonga: "We cannot have a system of justice for Erap and another system for ordinary citizens." So de Venecia backtracked from backroom talks and advised Erap that anymore planning-no longer of exile but only of a short trip to the US for knee surgery-would have to be premised on his "return to the judicial process."

Erap rejected the idea. In his mind, he has the upper hand. As Tiglao has said, he is following a script, as if he was still in the movies. A high PNP officer said that Erap’s advisers want him to look persecuted when he is forcibly taken to court on Wednesday as ordered by the Sandiganbayan. But his predecessor Fidel Ramos told him to stop acting. "He is not in the movies anymore, he should face the situation like anybody else," Ramos said. "Who does he think he is, Jose Rizal?"

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Ramos earlier had said that exile would make the Philippine look like a weakling in the eyes of the world. It would reveal an inability to enforce laws and systems of justice.

Sen. Joker Arroyo laments that the special treatment Erap is now getting already displays weakness. "In countries the world over with strong democratic institutions, detention prisoners are treated equally under the uniform standards and procedures of prison rules, regardless of rank, position, social class or standing in the community," Arroyo said in a speech last Saturday. "Not in the Philippines, or to be precise, not in the case of Erap. In consideration of being a former President, he is quartered in an air-conditioned suite in the Veterans Memorial Hospital with all the comfort of hotel amenities. This kind of extraordinary accommodation discriminates against the thousands and thousands of other detention prisoners all over the country. Clearly, there is here an unequal application of the law."

Arroyo noted that in marked contrast, two former Korean presidents, when charged with corruption, were detained in ordinary cells, then hailed to court manacled and garbed in prison uniform. "Yet throughout their trial," Arroyo added, "they comported themselves with stoic dignity befitting their former exalted status."

Arroyo also recalled the detention of Jose Laurel, Claro Recto, Benigno Aquino Sr. when charged after World War II with collaboration. "From a Tokyo prison, they were first brought to the Iwahig Penal Colony in far-off Palawan, and thereafter transferred to the Bilibid Prison," he said. Again, he compared their conduct with Erap: "At all times, they endured their incarceration, whether in Tokyo, in Iwahig or in the Bilibid with grace and manner worthy of respect." The senator cited recent history, when Salonga, Ninoy Aquino, Jose Diokno, Lorenzo Tañada, Soc Rodrigo, Geny Lopez, Serge Osmeña III, Tito Guingona, Chino Roces, Teddy Locsin Sr. – Nene Pimentel – were thrown into military stockades under Marcos martial law. "Even is such forbidding accommondation," he said, "they conducted themselves with pride and dignity."

"Common in all those I have mentioned was quiet defiance and fortitude of character," Arroyo concluded. "What about Erap? He acts like a spoiled brat, always complaining and ranting. This, despite the unprecedented privileges accorded to him, which he alone and no one else among the detention prisoners all over the country enjoys." Everybody knows that spoiled brats are not to be pampered but disciplined. If Erap persists in assailing the judiciary, perhaps the authorities should take away his privileges. They can start with that cellphone with which he calls the AM-radio stations for his daily tirades.

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Several times has it been pointed out that exile – whether through a knee surgery that his own physician Dr. Christopher Mow of Stanford says is not urgent, or through secret deals – is not the answer to Erap’s antics. Exile, as Justice Sec. Nani Perez said, has no basis in the Penal Code.

Arroyo noted that from the administration’s point of view, "removing Erap out of the country would eliminate a thorn that distracts government from pursuing its programs and objectives. In other words, government can get on with its business unburdened with the Erap albatross." But he adds that Gerald Ford thought the same way, and thus pardoned Richard Nixon upon resigning the Presidency. He thought that Americans should forget the past so they could move on, Arroyo said, "Ford’s move cost him the Presidency, which he lost to Carter."

Salonga said in a television show that Malacañang cannot even consider the exile option because Erap fell within the jurisdiction of the judiciary the moment he was arraigned on plunder charges last August. Under the separation of powers of the co-equal branches of government, Congress and the executive cannot interfere with the court process through appeals for medical treatment or exile. Erap will have to stop his tantrums and eventually resume trial. If he’s lucky, he’d be acquitted. If not, he’d be convicted. Only then, Salonga said, can he fall again within Malacañang’s authority and seek pardon.

Salonga advised that Erap confess to everything, now that he has admitted being alias Jose Velarde anyway. That would lead to pardon from the only authority higher than Malacañang and man.

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