MANILA - President Arroyo pardoned her ousted but still popular predecessor yesterday, paving the way for his release a month after he was sentenced to life in prison for massive corruption.
Acting Executive Secretary Ignacio Bunye said the pardon will restore former president Joseph Estrada’s civil and political rights and take effect upon his acceptance.
But a court ruling that forfeited Estrada’s villa and some bank accounts will remain in effect, he said.
Former president Fidel Ramos called the pardon “a terrible calamity to the great, great, great majority of the Filipino people who have suffered from the plunder.”
Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal, Senate President Manuel Villar and Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., however, have thrown their support behind the move.
In a joint letter addressed to President Arroyo, Cardinal Vidal, Villar and de Venecia appealed to her to grant absolute pardon to Estrada to heal “deep divisions in the country” and help the government focus on pressing national problems.
There was no immediate reaction from the 70-year-old Estrada, whom the Sandiganbayan has allowed to be detained in his sprawling villa in Rizal while appealing his Sept. 12 conviction for plunder. Estrada’s lawyers withdrew his appeal Monday, removing a key obstacle to the grant of pardon.
Going home
“I hereby grant executive clemency to Joseph Ejercito Estrada,” President Arroyo said in a statement, read by Bunye in a nationally televised announcement.
Estrada’s family, which has insisted on his innocence, welcomed the decision. “He said he is already going home,” said his wife Luisa, a former senator.
But others said the pardon was a cynical effort by Arroyo to draw attention away from her own alleged misdeeds and warned it could undermine efforts to stamp out corruption.
Bayan Muna Rep. Teodoro Casiño said the move was an “opportunist political maneuver” and state prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio said the pardon amounted to a license to break the law.
“A grant of pardon to Mr. Estrada simply means that one can commit such a grave offense and yet evade punishment,” he said in a petition filed before the pardon was announced. A pardon “is simply an obvious encouragement for more graft and corruption.”
Leniency
Arroyo cited her government’s policy of releasing convicts who have reached 70, Estrada’s 6.5 years’ detention and his public pledge not to seek any public office in deciding to pardon her political nemesis.
A court order forfeiting a mansion and more than P600 million in bank accounts believed to be owned by Estrada would remain in place.
The court will order Estrada’s release after receiving a copy of Arroyo’s pardon, spokesman Renato Bocar said.
Estrada was arrested in 2001, months after his ouster by a nonviolent “people power” revolt that installed Arroyo, then his vice president, in Malacañang.
He was convicted last Sept. 12 after a landmark six-year trial on charges that he took bribes and kickbacks while in office. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Interior and Local Government Secretary Ronaldo Puno, in a television interview, said he will meet with Estrada today to deliver the executive clemency in Tanay, Rizal.
Closure
Once Estrada accepts, the order will be brought to the Sandiganbayan for its implementation.
Puno said they will try their best to release Estrada by lunchtime.
“President Arroyo believes granting pardon is good for the country and that takes precedence over all other considerations. This is the political closure on this case. The issue of her legitimacy is over as far as Joseph Estrada is concerned because it is the legitimate President who can give a legal, valid pardon,” said Davao City Rep. Prospero Nograles.
Former ombudsman Simeon Marcelo scored the decision, saying it could be one of the biggest mistakes of the Arroyo administration.
“What’s the use of convicting a big fish if he ends up getting pardoned anyway? I don’t know how to describe my feelings basta ang alam ko galit ako (but I am definitely angry). Hindi ako makapag-isip rationally,” said Marcelo.
The head of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) in Cebu City also views the President’s pardon of Estrada as a step in the wrong direction.
The move may have been made in the name of unity and reconciliation, but lawyer Joseph Briccio Boholst said it will result instead in disharmony and set a precedent for the disregard of law, order and justice.
“It devalues justice, it devalues our efforts to bring before to justice and to jail a man who has transgressed against the country,” he said in Cebuano in an interview with radio dyLA.
‘A done deal’
Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio expressed the belief that the pardon was a “done deal.”
“We will be meeting with the panel and support groups. I am in a state of disbelief,” said Villa-Ignacio.
In his three-page letter to Acting Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera, Villa-Ignacio said there is no legal basis to even recommend to the President the grant of pardon to Estrada, whether absolute or conditional.
Under Philippine law, pardon cannot be granted when a person has been impeached, he pointed out.
Estrada previously said the continued deterioration of his mother’s health is one of the reasons he decided to soften his stand.
Doña Mary Marcelo Ejercito, 102, has been bedridden for more than two months now at the San Juan Medical Center. (Sunnex/AP)/KNR/NRC)
