Robredo suggests transferring GMA to military hospital in QC

MANILA, Philippines—The government can better secure former President and now Pampanga Rep.  Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at the Armed Forces of the Philippines Medical Center (formerly known as V. Luna Medical Center) in Quezon City, Interior Secretary Jesse M. Robredo said Friday.

He said the authorities would treat Arroyo “no different from Erap,” referring to former President Joseph Estrada, who was initially detained at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center, another military hospital in Quezon City, before he was transferred to a military facility in Tanay, Rizal, and later to his rest house nearby.

“But this is the call of the judge,” Robredo said in a text message to the INQUIRER.

In a separate radio interview, Robredo said Pasay Regional Trial Court Judge Jesus Mupas “would determine whether she needs [to be under] house arrest or not.”

“Wasn’t President Erap in a government hospital, and it turned out to be okay? And [we just have to] make sure and make it clear that she is in the custody of the government,” he said.

Robredo said it would all depend on Judge Mupas.

“If the court decides that she be in a government hospital then she will be in a government hospital, but if the court says in a regular detention facility then we will prepare a detention center for her,” he said.

In a surprising turn, Arroyo’s lawyers on Friday asked the court to allow her to be placed under house arrest instead of continuing her “hospital arrest” arrangement at the St Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig City, saying she was now fit to go home.

The lawyers had previously insisted that Arroyo, who is purportedly suffering from degenerative bone condition following three surgeries on her cervical spine in June and August, should be allowed to stay in the hospital since she was arrested for electoral sabotage on Nov. 18.

Arroyo, now a representative of Pampanga, and her husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo, had tried to fly to Singapore on Nov. 15, supposedly to seek treatment there for her ailment but were blocked by a watch-list order of the Department of Justice in defiance of a Supreme Court temporary restraining order that would have allowed her to go.

A joint investigation panel of the DOJ and the Commission on Elections then indicted Arroyo and three others on an electoral sabotage charge in connection with allegations they rigged the 2007 senatorial polls. This then prompted the Pasay court to issue a warrant for her arrest.