Aquino: I want to see Arroyo remorse

President Benigno Aquino III

Just how sorry will she be?

President Benigno Aquino III said he will look for signs of remorse in former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo should he have to decide whether or not to pardon her if she is convicted of the charges against her.

It will be recalled that Arroyo herself pardoned former President Joseph Estrada after he was convicted of plunder and faced a long stretch in prison.

Mr. Aquino, however, acknowledged that it was way too early to talk about granting clemency to Arroyo as she had yet to be arraigned in connection with the electoral sabotage case filed against her in a Pasay City court.

“A pardon, I think, is governed by several policies within the Board of Pardons and Parole. The degree of remorse is one component that I remember,” said the President in a recent interview over ABS-CBN News Channel.

“Of course, at this point in time they manifest that they are innocent of any of the charges. So if they still profess [their innocence], where is the remorse? Where can we see the remorse there?” he said.

At this stage of the process, however, Mr. Aquino acknowledged to anchor Lynda Jumilla that “it’s too way, way ahead, I think.”

As for placing Arroyo under house arrest instead of a hospital detention where she is now, Mr. Aquino expressed his disapproval.

“Why house arrest? Nagkaroon pa ng arrest, di ba (There was an arrest, wasn’t there)?” he said.

‘Hospitals best venue’

The President said that if one were to consider Arroyo’s medical condition, “the hospitals should be the best venue for it.”

“I guess the only thing we can say is we will afford her rights. We will protect them to the fullest extent possible.”

He continued: “But at the same time there are issues and concerns that have to be addressed that were never addressed during her incumbency. So that in end we [will] have closure. If we have closure, we move on.”

Mr. Aquino, however, conceded that it would be up to the courts to decide where Arroyo should be held as she undergoes a trial.

“It is the court that determines where the detainee should be held. In fact, there is an Article III of the Constitution about having no special detention facility but that was in the context of safe houses during the martial law period,” Mr. Aquino said.

“But if we put her in a place that is not mandated by the courts, that can be argued as a special detention area in violation of the Constitution,” he said.

In another vein, the President said the administration’s anticorruption drive was moving but not as fast as he wanted.

“It needs six years to adjudicate a case? One would forget what the lesson was, but I have to admit that really things are moving,” he said.

One issue Mr. Aquino said he wanted to attain closure was the “Hello Garci” scandal that Arroyo found herself in six years ago.

“For instance, the Hello Garci issue in 2005, we reached 2009 and the case wasn’t even started. We have reached the end of the prescription period. I was really pondering how do you actually resolve that?” the President said.

“(How do you resolve that) with formality? With something that can serve as a lesson to the next two generations, three generations and so on. Fifty years from now, will they have forgotten it or will they repeat the same mistakes?”