EDITORIAL – Vidal can, but should not

According to Msgr. Achilles Dakay, the media liaison officer of the Cebu Archdiocese, Cardinal Vidal will not say no if the Sandiganbayan frees former president Joseph Estrada, who is under house arrest on charges of plunder, and lets Vidal take custody on recognizance.

We concede Vidal is not likely to say no, and there are many reasons why he would not. But all that rests on the assumption that Estrada would be freed on recognizance, which we think he would not.

The push to have Estrada released on recognizance is just another ploy by his battery of lawyers, most notably Rene Saguisag, who has grown notorious for having made one of the greatest somersaults in Philippine political history.

In case you have not noticed, the lawyers of Estrada have been engaging the government in a long series of initiatives disguised as brilliant legal maneuvers but which are in reality nothing but mischievous manipulations meant to test and embarrass.

The release-on-recognizance initiative was hatched by Saguisag, the once highly-respected cause-oriented lawyer who now espouses the most dubious of causes, based on assumptions tied to the controversial rape case involving US Marines.

There is reason to doubt whether the release of Estrada on recognizance is really the plan or if it is just another ploy to twit the government, that is, based on what his lawyers have tried and tested before.

Estrada has, time and again, been given almost everything he wanted, including the most frivolous. The government probably thinks it is far less troublesome to give him the crumbs lest he goes for the main dish.

But that is something that is best left between the government and Estrada. Cardinal Vidal should not lend himself to this charade. The measure of his humanitarian sense does not rise and fall on the scale of Estrada's mischief.

Sure, Vidal can take in Estrada if he wants, and if that happens. But there are far more causes that need his attention than taking in a man who is not really suffering under detention but who has been given all the perks no man ought to be allowed under similar circumstances.