Arroyo planning to leave Philippines again–aides

Former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. INQUIRER file photo

MANILA, Philippines — Former Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will make another attempt to leave the country on Wednesday, her aides said, a day after the government defied a court order and blocked her first effort.

Arroyo, 64, has said she urgently needs to seek medical treatment abroad for a bone disease, but President Benigno Aquino III’s administration is refusing to let her leave, fearing she is just seeking to avoid a graft investigation.

Arroyo, wearing a neck brace and in a wheelchair, turned up at Manila airport in an ambulance late Tuesday to fly to Singapore, hours after the Supreme Court ruled the government must not block her from travelling.

But in a remarkable stand-off between the two branches of government, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said she would defy the court order and ordered immigration officials to stop Arroyo from leaving.

Arroyo’s lawyer, Ferdinand Topacio, said Wednesday she and her relatives would try again to fly out of the country.

“That is our plan because that is our right,” Topacio said on television.

Her spokeswoman, Elena Bautista Horn, in the same television interview said that Mrs. Arroyo had an appointment with a medical specialist in Singapore on Thursday, and insisted again that she was not planning to flee and seek asylum abroad.