“I AM already 71 and according to the Revised Penal Code, you have to be released once you reach the age of 70. After the end of my term, I will be 77. Where will they place me?”
— President Duterte
When the Supreme Court in August 2015 granted bail to then senator Juan Ponce Enrile, it even thrashed the Sandiganbayan for earlier rejecting his request twice. The anti-graft court, the SC said, “arbitrarily ignored” the purpose of bail: to guarantee Enrile’s appearance in court. It also “unwarrantedly disregarded the clear showing of fragile health and advance age” of the senator.
Enrile was then 91 and, according to his doctor, suffering from chronic hypertension with “fluctuating blood pressure levels, diffuse atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, irregular heartbeat, asthma-COPD overlap syndrome.” He’ll be 95 next Feb. 14, three months before next year’s elections.
Different treatment
The high court flogged the decision of the trial court which must have considered that the senator, accused of plunder in connection with the P172 million stolen from his pork barrel, should not be treated differently than ordinary citizens accused of a crime, such as a 79-year-old man who stole P36 worth of chocolates and a 94-year-old woman who was arrested for killing an allegedly abusive husband.
Last Friday (Nov. 16), the Sandiganbayan fixed the bail of Rep. Imelda Romualdez-Marcos, former First Lady and Manila governor and human settlements minister during the martial law regime of Ferdinand Marcos. A furor had erupted over whether she should not be arrested when she did not appear last Nov. 9, the day the anti-graft court convicted her of seven counts of corruption for salting away US$200 million in Swiss banks.
Bail for Imelda
The Sandiganbayan didn’t cancel her bail and set it at P150,000 during pendency of her appeal. At 89 and with seven ailments listed by her doctor, she will run for Ilocos Norte governor next year while her daughter Gov. Imee will join the Senate race even as her son Bongbong continues to wait in the wings to take over as vice president when or if he wins his election protest against Vice President Leni Robredo.
Old age and ill health must have been considered by Sandiganbayan this time, what with the SC scolding that it got in the Enrile case. Apparently, old age combined with poor health – but with extreme wealth, at least in the cases of Enrile and Imelda Maros — seem to benefit the accused.
Sense of impunity
The thought that old age could protect a public official if he is charged criminally in the future might lead to a sense of impunity. Gideon Lasco, writing in Inq.net last Nov. 15, referred to it as “impunity from senility.”
President Duterte must already be thinking about it, given the number of enemies who are expected to hound him after he steps down from Malacañang. He said that at 77 when his term expires, where would they place him? The Revised Penal Code he cited provides that age is a “mitigating circumstance”; meaning, it may reduce the penalty. Capital punishment is no longer in the statute books; the benefit is no longer relevant. But the over-70 convict is not automatically released.
Cry for ‘lock ‘em up’
This is not to banish compassion for the elderly who is punished for violating the law. People wouldn’t call for a just penalty against a convicted public official who already owned up the crime and atoned for sins against the nation.
The call for the equivalent of blood against public officials like Imelda and Enrile could be that they never admitted wrongdoing. Seeing them up and about, waving their COCs for the next elections, must have prompted the cry of “Lock ‘em up” from worried citizens.