Arroyo recuperating after neck surgery

MANILA, Philippines—Former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was recuperating after an estimated  five-hour surgery on her neck to realign a portion of her spine that was causing pressure on the nerves that control movement of her upper limbs, according to her half-sister.

“Doctor just came out. Surgery successful. Praise the Lord,” Cielo Macapagal-Salgado said in a text message on Friday.

Earlier, at a little past noon, Arroyo’s family—husband Mike, sons Ang Galing Pinoy party-list Representative Mikey Arroyo and Camarines Sur Representative Dato Arroyo and their grandchildren—were seen dining at a restaurant near the lobby of the St. Luke’s Medical Center in Fort Bonifacio in Taguig City.

From what reporters could see of the dining area, the Arroyo men were smiling and appeared to be in high spirits as they talked and lounged in the comfortable restaurant seats.

At about 3 p.m., Mikey Arroyo stepped out into the hospital’s driveway, smiling and waving to reporters. He entered his vehicle and left without answering requests for information.

Another Arroyo political ally, Lito Atienza, the former mayor of Manila and former environment secretary, arrived at about 2 p.m. Before entering the facility and obliged reporters, saying he and his family were constantly praying for the success of the surgery on the now Pampanga representative.

But when Atienza left the hospital, all he could give was a smile and a wave.

On Thursday, Arroyo’s main attending physician, Dr. Juliet Gopez-Cervantes said the surgery had been scheduled for 7 a.m. Friday and would take about five hours.

Arroyo’s lawyer, Raul Lambino, said his client had been informed the day before her surgery that a new set of whistleblowers had emerged accusing her of election fraud.

She just shrugged it off as “old news,” Lambino said.

Lambino said Arroyo told him to take care of the allegations of the Batasan break-in that she said was merely a rehash of previous charges that had been widely reported in the media years ago.

He said Arroyo even pointed out that this has been the subject of investigations by several bodies, including Congress itself.

“The old Congress was filled with very vocal opposition leaders. If they believed the charges then with the video evidence, they should have done something about it that same year,” Lambino said.

He said that Arroyo has been barred access to TV, radio, Internet and newspapers by her doctors, who feared that news reports could cause her undue stress.

“I’m the only one she asks for news about her cases. I’ll just avoid visiting her in the hospital while she recovers. I don’t want to be a bearer of bad news,” said Lambino in a phone interview.

Aside from what he described as “orchestrated efforts” by Malacañang to pin down Arroyo for election fraud and government graft, Lambino also denied that thee former president had deep pockets to hire top lawyers, claiming most of them were working pro bono.

“The impression that former PGMA and her husband are spending lots of money for legal fees is wrong, unfounded and baseless.  While the defense counsels of PGMA are well-known for their capability, integrity, competence and knowledge of the law, they agreed to help primarily to ensure that the constitutional and legal rights of the Arroyos will be observed and respected. Some of them don’t even charge any fee at all,” said Lambino.

Lawyer Estelito Mendoza said that while he was representing Arroyo in two cases (one with the Supreme Court and the other with the Department of Justice), he has no plans of representing her in electoral fraud cases.

Mendoza is the lawyer of the late Fernando Poe Jr., who claimed to have been cheated in the 2004 presidential elections.