Lawyer wants to buy original Arroyo police mugshots

Mug shots of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as shown from www. mugshots.com

MANILA, Philippines—Tongue firmly in cheek, activist lawyer Argee Guevarra, a self-styled victim of the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration, has offered P50,000 for a set of the original mugshots of the embattled former president.

In a letter to Director General Nicanor Bartolome of the Philippine National Police, Guevarra said he would use the photos in a collage of his “former political tormentors,” which he planned to hang on a  wall in his law office.

“I am offering to purchase from the PNP duly certified copies of the mugshots of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (representing her left, right and front profiles) in the amount of P50,000.00,” he said in the  letter.

PNP spokesperson Chief Superintendent Agrimero Cruz Jr. said Guevarra might be barking up the wrong tree.

Asked by the Inquirer to comment on Guevarra’s  letter, Cruz said: “The PNP is not selling mugshots. If he really wants a copy, then he can always make a request to Pasay Judge Jesus Mupas.”

The Arroyo mugshots generated controversy after purported copies circulated on social networks on Monday and were published on the front page of the Inquirer the following day despite strict orders by court and police authorities not to release them.

Officials later made conflicting statements on the authenticity of the mugshots, which showed Arroyo wearing a neck brace and apparently in a hospital bed.

Interior Secretary Jesse M. Robredo and Bartolome issued statements that the published images were not the same as the official ones that were submitted to the court, although a court officer and a policeman said they very nearly resembled the originals.

“In the spirit of your avowed policy of transparency to the public, I would like to make a personal request that will inure to the benefit of my private collection of social realist art,” Guevarra said in his letter.

He said he understood the PNP’s “political reservations” about releasing the mugshots, but that he wished to assert his right as a citizen to access the photos, which “in my legal opinion, form part of public records and are in the nature of public property.”

Guevarra cited his previous experiences as an activist when he was twice arrested, booked and imprisoned under what he described as the “Pidal National Police,” an allusion to the multi-million bank accounts under the fictitious name Jose Pidal, which were allegedly used to launder money during the Arroyo presidency.

He said he was sure that the PNP made more than 20 sets of mugshots for record purposes. “All I ask is for one set of mugshots. And besides, the PNP will retain the negatives,” he said.

Guevarra was arrested with Inquirer columnist Randy David and now political adviser Ronald Llamas in February 2006 while leading a Laban ng Masa protest march against the former president along Edsa and which coincided with GMA’s declaration of a national state of emergency.

On November 29, 2007, Guevarra was arrested and detained at the Camp Crame detention center with former Vice-President Teofisto Guingona, Bishop Julio Labayen, Brig. Gen. Danny Lim and Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and other anti-Arroyo personalities for his involvement in the Manila Peninsula siege.

In a press statement he sent to reporters, Guevarra said he would use the mugshots to start his “Wall of Shame” composed of the photos of “prominent GMA cronies who have lied, cheated and plundered from the people and whom he hopes to be dragged soon before the bar of justice.”

“GMA’s arrest should help restore our faith in the country’s justice system which was reduced to ‘Just Tiis’  during GMA’s reign of kleptocratic impunity,” he said.

“It serves as a graphic reminder and familiar warning to all those who are in power about the truism in jeepney tantra: ‘GOD KNOWS HUDAS NOT PAY.’”