Saturday, October 27, 2007 An issue of wisdom, not of law, says professor on pardon debate
TO CHALLENGE the executive clemency extended to former president Joseph Estrada, one questions wisdom, not the law, a law professor said.
Despite the opinion that the pardon was flawed, as clemency does not extend to impeached government officials, law professor Danilo Ramos said the act was “well within the authority of the President.”
For starters, he said, the clemency was extended against the criminal conviction imposed on the former president by the Sandiganbayan.
As for his impeachment, “The Lower House endorsed the complaint but the Senate was never able to make a ruling,” Ramos said.
Estrada’s impeachment trial was halted when he stepped down from Malacañang in January 2001, at the height of Edsa 2—an act that the Supreme Court, then under the leadership of former chief justice Hilario Davide Jr., viewed as his resignation.
“The issue here is right or wrong because it is legal. The only question is whether or not it is good for the people. Personally, I don’t think this is right,” Ramos said.
Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio of the Office of the Ombudsman, who prosecuted the plunder case against the former president before the Sandiganbayan, earlier questioned the move.
He sent a three-page letter to Acting Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera and argued there is no legal basis to even recommend to the President the grant of pardon.
Under the law, he pointed out, pardon cannot be granted when a person has been impeached.
He also cited the apparent “indecent haste” in the way the pardon was facilitated.
While the President has the power to grant amnesty, rules are set forth in the 2006 Revised Manual for the Board of Pardons and Parole.
“We can say that all these rules and laws have been disregarded in this case. There is what we can call indecent haste,” Villa-Ignacio said.
Atty. Ramos, for his part, said Villa-Ignacio’s reaction, as well as that of all those who labored to secure Estrada’s conviction, was quite understandable. “The effort they put in was by no means small,” he said.
Ramos and Villa-Ignacio had been colleagues since the latter was still a prosecutor in the city of Pasig.
“But wrong or right, it is legal,” he said of the pardon.
The Supreme Court, in the 1995 case of People vs. Francisco Salle, discusses how the authority of the President to grant clemency has been firmly established.
It has been in place since the inception of the Jones Law which, among others, provides that “the governor-general of the Philippine Islands... is hereby vested with the exclusive power to grant pardons and reprieves and remit fines and forfeitures...”
The concept was carried over in the 1935 Constitution, where the first limitation—the exclusion of impeached officials—was set.
The 1973 Constitution adopted the concept but went further by providing that pardon could be granted only after final conviction.
The 1981 amendments to the 1973 Constitution removed the limitation of final conviction but it was restored in the present Constitution.
Section 19, Article VII reads: “Except in cases of impeachment, or as otherwise provided in this Constitution, the President may grant reprieves, commutations and pardons, and remit fines and forfeitures, after conviction by final judgment.”
Atty. Ramos said because the executive pardon was imposed against a criminal case conviction, and because Estrada’s impeachment trial was cut short, the only requirement that needed to be hurdled was that Estrada’s conviction was final.
“His lawyers took care of that by withdrawing his appeal to the Sandigan-bayan,” Ramos explained. (KNR)
