No need to put Arroyo in jail – Estrada

Friday, February 3, 2012

MANILA – Former President Joseph Estrada said Friday he sees no need to move detained Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to a regular jail “because she is a woman."

"I think she can continue to be held in hospital arrest. Not because she is a former president because I myself suffered being incarcerated in a regular prison but because she is a woman. It's not out of respect for a former president because no one is above the law but maybe we can afford some leniency because she is a woman," Estrada said in a statement released Friday.

Arroyo succeeded Estrada who was ousted by a popular revolt in 2001.

Estrada was detained for six years and a half and later convicted for plunder by the anti-graft court in 2007. Arroyo granted him presidential pardon.

Arroyo, the second woman to become Philippine president, is on hospital detention after she was arrested on charges of electoral sabotage. The Commission on Elections alleged Arroyo and other former officials rigged the 2007 midterm elections in favor of the administration senators.

She initially stayed at an expensive hospital in Taguig City but was later transferred to the government-run Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City.

A regular cell has been prepared for her at the headquarters of the Southern Police District in Taguig City but her doctors insisted Arroyo needed more time in the hospital.

Arroyo's camp have also asked the court Thursday to allow the former President to visit the wake and attend the burial of her brother-in-law, the late Negros Occidental Representative Ignacio “Iggy” Arroyo, who died in London last week following a cardiac arrest. (Sunnex)