Regular jail sought for Arroyo

Former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo

State prosecutors will move for the immediate transfer to a regular jail of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo unless the Sandiganabayan, which is trying the plunder case against her, allows Arroyo’s continued confinement at the state-owned Veterans Memorial Medical Center.

Lead prosecutor Diosdado Calonge said the law does not make a distinction whether an accused is a lowly government clerk or the highest official of the land.

“There should be no special treatment. Anyway she has been previously discharged (from the hospital) on the advice of her doctors,” he said.

Calonge said he would ask Arroyo’s attending physicians about her true medical condition so the prosecutors and the justices themselves could decide.

Arroyo and nine other former officials of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) and the Commission on Audit were indicted for plunder, a non-bailable crime, for allegedly conspiring to misuse P366 million of the PCSO’s intelligence fund from 2008 to 2010. Cynthia D. Balana