EDITORIAL— Certainty of conviction

Within just a day, former speaker Martin Romualdez was charged with plunder before the Sandiganbayan, ordered arrested and then “detained.”

As in many other cases involving VIP defendants in this country, however, Romualdez had the privilege of being “detained” in one of the country’s top private hospitals, ostensibly due to an “anxiety attack” and a “cardiovascular event.”

You’d feel anxious, too, and suffer a cardiovascular event if you face the prospect of detention without bail for the first of what prosecutors have promised to be a slew of criminal cases involving plunder, malversation, money laundering and graft.

Not all defendants, however, are granted detention at the Cardinal Santos Medical Center. This “hospital arrest” for what many consider as a big fish in the massive corruption scandal involving flood control projects and budget anomalies diminishes the impact of the case filed yesterday by the Office of the Ombudsman against Romualdez, his housekeeper in his Forbes Park home and fugitive former Ako Bicol party-list congressman Zaldy Co.

It took several months for the ombudsman to build up the case involving P7.4 billion in flood control kickbacks that Co is alleged to have sent regularly to Romualdez’s home along McKinley Street.

Romualdez has consistently maintained his innocence, denying that he exerted what the ombudsman described as “institutional influence” over Co, who chaired the powerful House committee on appropriations.

Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla said the money supposedly pocketed was so massive there was no more room to stash the loot, prompting Romualdez to allegedly go on a house buying spree and even to donate $2 million to Harvard University where he had earned a Certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management in 1988. 

The plunder case landed in the Third Division of the Sandiganbayan, which recently allowed former senator Bong Revilla to post bail for plunder involving a P92.8-million ghost flood control project in Pandi, Bulacan. Remulla implied impropriety in the court decision, saying the bail case had been “natrabaho.”

On Aug. 25, state prosecutors asked one of the two Third Division justices, Ronald Moreno, to voluntarily inhibit from the Revilla case, accusing him of partiality, “unwarranted conduct” toward prosecution witnesses and apparent prejudgment of testimonies. Moreno has yet to respond to the petition.

Remulla had previously pointed out the difficulty of securing conviction for plunder. Among the other challenges facing him is dispelling doubts that the case against Romualdez, a cousin of President Marcos, is designed for acquittal.

The ombudsman, who as justice secretary required “reasonable certainty of conviction” before cases are filed in court, must ensure that the charges against VIP defendants will stick.