MANILA, Philippines – Commission on Elections Commissioner Grace Padaca pleaded not guilty to graft and malversation charges, on Tuesday, and posted another P70,000 bail after her previous bond was forfeited by the Sandiganbayan for her failure to attend an earlier hearing.
Elections Commissioner Grace Padaca. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Padaca arrived at the anti-graft court’s Third Division in the afternoon, assisted by her three counsels after being formally notified of the cancellation of her bail and the issuance of a warrant for her arrest.
Presiding Justice Amparo Cabotaje-Tang denied her previous motion to lift the arrest warrant, which the court issued Monday, for her failure to attend her arraignment last week, and compelled her to appear in the arraignment.
Her posting of bail automatically quashed the arrest warrant.
Padaca’s P70,000 bail was drawn from her unused travel bond amounting to P140,000.
In May 2012, President Aquino played patron and friend to then newly appointed election commissioner Padaca by posting the consolidated bail of P40,000 for malversation and P30,000 for graft when the Sandiganbayan issued the first arrest warrant against Padaca and upheld the finding of probable cause to indict her by the Office of the Ombudsman.
Padaca, 49, and a Ramon Magsaysay awardee, has been charged with graft for awarding to a nongovernment organization in 2006 a contract to manage a P25-million credit facility for rice farmers, without public bidding, when she was still governor of Isabela province. In her defense, she said the bidding was not required for the project and that the government was not damaged by the deal.
Her co-accused were the provincial legal officer Johnas Lamonera, municipal councilor Servando Soriano and Dionisio Pine, manager of the Economic Development for Western Isabela and Northern Luzon Foundation Inc. (Edwinlfi).
The Office of the Ombudsman said that Padaca allowed Edwinlfi to act as the middle man in disbursing the loan to farmers, but the non-government organization failed to liquidate P3.6 million, and that a total of P18 million of the loan was listed under loan receivables.
She filed a petition for review before the Supreme Court to seek a temporary restraining order on the case but this the high court has not acted on this petition to date.
The Sandiganbayan also denied her motion to quash the information and proceeded to set her arraignment.
She was already conditionally arraigned before she flew to Dubai for a seminar on overseas absentee voting.
Upon her return, the court scheduled her arraignment for October 17, which she failed to attend.
During the arraignment, Associate Justices Samuel Martires and Alex Quiroz chided Padaca’s lawyers for not informing their client of the importance of the arraignment. The lawyers admitted their mistake and apologized to the court.
“There must be a compliance with the court’s order,” said Quiroz.
In an interview after the hearing, Padaca told reporters she did not mean to defy the court order and explained that she thought that the presence of her lawyers during last week’s scheduled arraignment was enough since she was already conditionally arraigned in 2012.
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