MALACAÑANG advised Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Monday, December 3, to avoid making "hasty and premature" judgments about former Bayan Muna representative Satur Ocampo's arrest.
The advice was made after Locsin on Saturday, December 1, expressed his dismay over the kidnapping and human trafficking charges filed against Ocampo.
Both Locsin and Ocampo were members of the House of Representatives from 2001 to 2010 as representatives of Makati and Bayan Muna, respectively.
In a statement, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said Locsin's remarks were the latter's "personal sentiments supportive of a friend being former colleague with Mr. Ocampo in Congress."
Panelo added that while the Palace respects Locsin's stance on Ocampo's arrest, it told the country's top diplomat to let the legal processes give the final verdict on the former lawmaker.
"We wish to state that his (Locsin) personal position on the matter (kidnapping and human trafficking charges against Ocampo) does not reflect the official view of the Administration on the issue," Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in a statement.
"We thus reiterate our advice to all parties to trust the process without hasty and premature judgments. Let the legal mechanism work as it should. That is what the Rule of Law is all about. The law hears before it convicts, and it hears before it acquits as well," he added.
Ocampo was arrested on November 30, along with incumbent ACT Teachers party-list Representative France Castro and several others, for allegedly kidnapping and trafficking Lumad students in Talaingod, Davao del Norte.
Ocampo and his group were giving an aid to Lumad schools in indigenous communities when the police arrested them following complaints from "parents and tribal leaders" in the province.
Locsin dismissed the charges hurled against Ocampo as "idiotic."
"Human trafficking? B***s***. I won't even bother to get the other side, I know Satur. We protected him in our Congress against warrants of arrest," the Foreign Affairs chief said in a Twitter post on December 1.
But for Panelo, "friendship, however, does not give birth to the conclusive conclusion that a person charged of a crime is innocent nor does a charge sheet automatically make such individual guilty thereof."
"That is precisely why the Constitution grants every citizen the presumption of innocence and burdens the state to prove the guilt of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt," the Palace official added.
On Sunday, December 2, Ocampo, Castro, and 16 others were released from jail after posting bail.
Panelo said Ocampo and his group's temporary release merely proves that they were given due process.
He then reiterated that Ocampo and his supporters should let the law run its course.
"The request of Mr. Ocampo and his group to have a preliminary investigation to rebut the allegations, and to proffer evidence in support of their defense was granted by Prosecutor's Office in Tagum City," he said.
"Presently, they are enjoying their liberty on account of the bail posted by them in court. Those facts alone show they are being accorded due process. Other legal remedies to which they are entitled are available to them. Let the law take its course," Panelo added. (SunStar Philippines)