Leonen: Joseph Estrada DQ ruling gives hope for top-level grafters

MANILA, Philippines—An “ambiguous” pardon allowed him to walk free despite his conviction for a heinous crime, and allowing such a man to return to public office provides a “template” on how the political elite can get away with high-level corruption once public outrage had died down.

This was the argument of one of the Supreme Court justices who were outvoted when the high tribunal ruled on the petitions seeking the disqualification of former President and now Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada.

In an 11-3 vote last week, the majority of the magistrates ruled that Estrada could keep his post since he was granted “absolute” pardon by his successor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, shortly after his conviction for plunder in 2007. The pardon was deemed to have restored his civil and political rights, including his eligibility to again seek public office.

But in his 74-page dissenting opinion, Associate Justice Marvic Leonen warned that the Jan. 21 decision could prove detrimental to the government’s anticorruption campaign.

“The person convicted of plunder now walks free among us. He did not spend a single day in an ordinary jail. There is no question that he was pardoned. Today, the majority completes the circle by reading an ambiguous pardon allowing him yet again to run for public office,” Leonen said in his opinion, which was released to the media Wednesday.

“This is a template for our political elite at the expense of the masses who toil and suffer from the consequences of corruption. It is hope for those who occupy high government offices who commit crimes as they await a next political term when the people’s vigilance would have waned. It is the denouement in a narrative that will explain why there is no effective deterrent to corruption in high places,” he added.

“The pragmatism of politics takes over the highest notion that public office should be of effective public trust. The rule of law should unravel to meet this expectation,” he added.

Leonen, who joined Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno and Associate Justice Antonio Carpio in voting against the majority ruling, maintained that the Arroyo pardon was silent on the restoration of Estrada’s right to vote or be elected to public office. “If the president (Arroyo) is to not actually say that the rights of suffrage and to hold public office are restored, there is plainly no basis for concluding that they have, in fact, been restored.”

The justice refuted Estrada’s claim that the pardon was a “forgive-and-forget” act by Arroyo granting him a clean slate. Estrada, who was ousted from Malacañang through a People Power uprising in 2001, was “no common convict,” Leonen stressed.

“(He) is a man who, tormented with recriminations of massive corruption and failing to exculpate himself in the eyes of the Filipino people, was left with no recourse but to leave the Presidency. He stood trial for and was convicted of plunder: a conviction that endures and stands unreversed,” he added.

He described Estrada’s crime to be beyond “greed and covetousness.” “It conjures the image of a public officer deluded in the thought that he or she is some overlord, free to ravage and entitled to seize all that his or her realm can provide.”