MANILA, Philippines—Three senators on Tuesday backed the Supreme Court’s decision, allowing former President and now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to seek medical treatment abroad.
“This is a good job on the part of the Supreme Court. I commend the Supreme Court,” Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago told reporters, saying a person’s right to travel is a “constitutionally protected right.”
Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero, an administration ally, described the ruling as “fair and reasonable.”
“While I believe that PGMA (Arroyo’s initials) has to answer for a lot of things, she should be made to do so under the proper constitutional processes,” Escudero said in a statement.
“An illegal and unconstitutional circular issued during PGMA’s time remains the same even if used against PGMA herself now. If her administration resorted to tactics like this then something should set the present administration apart from its predecessor by going through and recognizing due and legal processes,” he added.
Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, who also opposed the travel ban against Arroyo, was no longer surprised by the decision of the court.
“We saw it coming,” Lacson said, reiterating his position that the government’s watch list order could not be used to prevent a person from leaving the country.
But Arroyo’s possible flight could still be prevented, the senators said, if the Department of Justice would file the case against her in court and seek its approval to stop the former leader from leaving the country.
“To prevent the possible flight of the former president from facing the accusations against her, the justice department should exercise its mandate by filing appropriate charges in courts and petition for a hold departure order. This is the proper legal action which does not circumvent constitutional and basic rights,” said Escudero.
Lacson believes there was mishandling of the case because the DoJ failed to immediately bring it in court.
“They have all the time in the world to conduct or finish the preliminary investigation and file the information in court and wait for the warrant of arrest to be issued. Ang nangyari, nag-dilly dally at nag focused sa isyu ng watch list order. Naubos ang oras sa media, nakalimutan ang preliminary investigation (What happened was, they dilly-dallied and focused on the watch-list-order issue. They wasted time with the media and forgot about preliminary investigation),” he said.
“Now, they are rushing the preliminary investigation. Hindi rin naman pu-pwde yun, yun dapat namang i-accord ng due process yung respondent (That can’t be done, the respondent should be accorded with due process),” Lacson added.