Prosecutors commit another blunder
Senator Juan Ponce Enrile. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/RICHARD A. REYES
MANILA, Philippines—State prosecutors trying to nail Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile for plunder on Friday continued to show their task to be in a tangle, as they brought a motion to clarify the admittedly unclear graft charges that they had brought against him.
The Ombudsman prosecution team—composed of Annielyn Medes Cabelis, Maria Janina J. Hidalgo, Jennifer A. Agustin and Edwin B. Gomez— asked the Sandiganbayan Third Division that it be allowed to use the term “Saros” (special allotment release orders) in place of “Subaros” (suballotment release order), which it used to identify the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) documents used as evidence in the plunder case against Enrile.
Besides plunder, Enrile is accused of 15 counts of graft in the P10-billion pork barrel scam allegedly masterminded by businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.
After the prosecutors brought the new motion, the court set the arraignment of Enrile and his coaccused for July 18.
Willy Rivera, a lawyer of Napoles, said the latest motion from the prosecutors betrayed the confusion of the state’s case.
“The prosecutors’ move to block Enrile’s motion for a bill of particulars in the plunder case is diametrically opposed to its admission that all information in the graft case is vague and that they are seeking to correct it,” Rivera told reporters after Friday’s hearing.
Rivera explained that the plunder and graft cases were intertwined, which meant that the prosecution could not block Enrile’s attempt to clarify the plunder charges against him while seeking the court’s nod to clarify the graft charges it had brought against the senator.
Scolded for ineptitude
On July 3, Associate Justice Rafael Lagos of the First Division admonished the prosecutors in the plunder case against Sen. Bong Revilla for ineptitude, as they did not know the difference between a Saro (issued by the DBM) and a Subaro (issued by the implementing agencies to their regional offices) in the Ombudsman’s complaint.
Lagos also scolded the prosecutors during Thursday’s hearing for an inaccurate presentation of the value of the Saros in the plunder case.
“You should have read the Ombudsman resolution because it is all there (the Saro number and amount covered by the document). You brought a lot of documents but you did not bring the basic document,” Lagos told the prosecutors.
Late last month, the prosecution also moved to amend the plunder charges against Enrile, Revilla and Sen. Jinggoy Estrada to pin them down as the brains behind the pork barrel scam, as the original complaint indicated that they were merely recipients of kickbacks.
Unnamed accused
The prosecutors were forced to withdraw their motions for amendment after the Sandiganbayan justices warned them that the changes could alter the findings of probable cause to put the senators under trial and lead to orders to release them from jail.
And recently, former Technology Resource Center (TRC) chief Antonio Ortiz asked the Sandiganbayan to censure the state prosecutors for a defect in three of the seven counts of graft that they had brought against him.
Invoking the doctrine res ipsa loquitor (the thing speaks for itself), Ortiz claimed that the information filed by prosecutors detailing the charges and the people involved in the three cases did not mention his name.
Ortiz, who fled to the United States before the Ombudsman could file the plunder and graft cases over the P10-billion pork barrel scam on June 6, asked the antigraft court to recall the warrants for his arrest in two counts of graft as a coaccused in Enrile’s graft cases and one count of graft as a coaccused in Estrada’s graft cases.
Prosecutors led by Deputy Special Prosecutor Manuel Soriano Jr. countered by asking the antigraft court to expunge Ortiz’s motion from the records.
But Ortiz, in his motion authenticated by the Philippine consular office in North Carolina, said that “the acts of the public prosecutors and pertinent legal doctrine clearly constitute contempt of court.”
“Their false and fabricated assertions in their ‘motion to expunge…’ tend to mislead the Sandiganbayan, directly impede, obstruct and degrade the administration of justice,” he added.
Ortiz faces four more counts of graft as a coaccused in Revilla’s graft cases. With a report from Dona Z. Pazzibugan
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