Camarines Sur Rep. Diosdado ‘Dato’ Arroyo defends mom: She’s a brave woman

Former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Rep. Diosdado ‘Dato’ Arroyo. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s youngest child on Friday took his turn to speak on her medical condition and legal troubles.

“Allow me to state the obvious: We have no intention of seeking political asylum abroad. Our entire family, the Arroyo family, has no plan to hide and seek political asylum in other countries, no matter how many unverified text messages Justice Secretary Leila de Lima uses as basis,” Camarines Sur Rep. Diosdado “Dato” Arroyo said in a rare appearance before members of the media who were camped out at the main driveway of St. Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig City.

Reading from a prepared statement, Arroyo said his mother “is a brave person.”

“If she wanted, she could have left and not returned when she stepped down as President, even before she was slapped with tons of cases that she knew were coming,” he said in Filipino.

Arroyo said he had come out as “a son who is a witness to his mother’s suffering,” to ask the public to pray for her, and that “she be treated fairly with the presumption of innocence stated in the Constitution.”

“Let us set aside politics and give importance to the processes of our democratic institutions,” he said.

But he did not take questions from the media.

Arroyo issued the statement hours after his mother’s lawyers amended their petition from hospital to house arrest, which bolstered speculation that the Pampanga representative had been faking her illness to justify her haste in leaving the country a week ago.