Justice system now free from ‘reign of fear,’ says Arroyo

Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Amid President Duterte’s testy relationship with the judiciary, former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said that the justice system was now free from the “reign of fear.”

Arroyo said in a speech before retired judges last Saturday that she was grateful to Mr. Duterte for “providing the enabling environment that freed the judiciary from the reign of fear.”

She said that compared to her prosecution for plunder and graft during the time of her successor, President Benigno Simeon Aquino III, the proceedings against the former President after he stepped down were fair.

“I’m not saying that political figures should be immune from prosecution, but I’m saying that the process should be fair and evenhanded — as I believe that the cases against Aquino and his allies now are undergoing a fair and evenhanded due process,” she said during the General  Assembly of the Association of Retired Regional Trial Court Judges of the Philippines in Manila. —Vince F. Nonato