Speaking from experience

Let me confess at the outset that I have never been a fan of Justice Secretary Leila de Lima. But I have high respect for the feisty Cabinet member of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. A practicing election lawyer, De Lima was first appointed as chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) during the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

I do not know De Lima from Eve. I only got to know more about her when she headed the CHR. Unfortunately, my impression of her was that of a CHR chief who loved to shoot first before asking questions.

While being tough on alleged police and military human rights abuses earned brownie points for De Lima from left-leaning groups, it generated negative public reaction for the officers and men of the police and military. Quite media-savvy, De Lima got away with it.

De Lima has developed much sharper media savvy now as Justice Secretary. She is honest enough to admit earlier that she has political plans for the coming Senate elections, that’s why. But her quest for a Senate post in the 2013 polls yet is obviously beclouding her better judgment.

Being too quick with her retort at the slightest chance to gain media mileage, De Lima has unnecessarily tainted every decision and action of the DOJ with personal politics in her mind. Worse, she has unnecessarily dragged the Justice Department to stray into ground beyond its jurisdiction and sadly, to public ridicule.

Imagine the DOJ Secretary having confirmed information that was based on a text message! Supposedly, she said, they have information that the Arroyos have allegedly applied for political asylum in the Dominican Republic. This was after P-Noy upheld the DOJ recommendation to disapprove the issuance of an Allow Departure Order (ADO) as requested by Mrs. Arroyo to travel abroad for further medical attention. The ex-President needs to get an ADO after De Lima placed her and her husband, former first gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, on the watch order list while undergoing preliminary investigation on their graft and poll fraud cases pending at the DOJ and at the Ombudsman.

De Lima later backpedaled and clarified that she merely responded to media query about the text message. De Lima could have just first picked up the phone and checked such information with Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto del Rosario. Aren’t they in the Aquino Cabinet at least talk with each other on matters affecting their respective turfs?

Over the weekend, the Associated Press in Manila was able to get in touch with no less than the Foreign Minister of Dominican Republic to check this information. It turns out no such asylum was sought by the Arroyos. That’s how easy to verify such information. With such antics by De Lima, the Aquino administration is only giving its critics and the opposition solid grounds to carp about the trial by publicity being waged on the cases against the Arroyos.

Experience is said to be the best teacher. We should learn from our mistakes. From experience, we base our course of action and decisions because we can have a certain degree of getting our desired results, not just to avoid committing the same mistakes and failures.

So P-Noy was perhaps only drawing lessons from the experience of his slain father, ex-Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., when he flatly rejected the Arroyos’ request to travel abroad, not even for medical reasons.

The late senator and his entire family, including the young Noy, were allowed to go to the US. The late dictator, ex-President Ferdinand Marcos, allowed Ninoy to get treatment in the US for a serious heart ailment he suffered while in detention. He was then already convicted of rebellion charges by a military tribunal. The late Senator agreed to sign a letter guaranteeing that he would return to the Philippines after the treatment.

While he and his family were safely living already in the US, the ex-Senator said a pact with the devil is no pact at all, or some words to that effect. So the Aquino family lived in self-exile in Boston until August 1983 when the ex-Senator decided to come back to the Philippines. And the rest is history.

In a loose sense, it was like an asylum. But technically it was not because he did not ask for it. Neither did the US grant it officially. And there was no demand from the Marcos government for his return. In fact, it was even the former First Lady and now Ilocos Norte Congresswoman Imelda Marcos who offered to send the ailing ex-Senator to the US for treatment and worked out the documents needed for his travel.

That was a more humane gesture than the counter-proposal made by P-Noy to Mrs. Arroyo’s medical travel request. P-Noy offered to bring the specialists of Mrs. Arroyo’s own choice to the Philippines at the expense of his administration.

Of course, P-Noy’s decision to turn down Mrs. Arroyo’s travel request has gotten the support of his allies and other camps. One of them, former President Joseph Estrada, publicly supported P-Noy’s decision even as he acknowledged that Mrs. Arroyo allowed him treatment abroad while undergoing trial for plunder here.

Although he was allowed to undergo knee surgery by a specialist of his own choice, ex-President Estrada disclosed that he had to make certain compromises with the Arroyo administration. Since Estrada’s attending surgeon Dr. Christopher Mow worked at the Stanford Hospital in San Francisco, they had to agree that his knee operation be done somewhere closer to home and Hong Kong was chosen. He was also compelled to bring along three government-designated police escorts to secure his return to the Philippines and only his wife, former First Lady Loi Ejercito, would accompany him.

Estrada, however, stressed that his case was totally different because he was not a flight risk unlike Mrs. Arroyo. He cited anew being offered not just once, but twice to go on self-exile abroad but which he rejected twice, too. This was a few weeks after Estrada’s ouster at the end of EDSA-2 in January 2001 when Mrs. Arroyo took over the government.

P-Noy, like Estrada, is speaking from personal experience. So it was not surprising when P-Noy finally rejected the travel request of Mrs. Arroyo after his usual hemming and hawing when, in fact, he had already made up his mind anyway.