MANILA: Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada, and Ramon Revilla Jr. should be given fair trial now that they have been charged with plunder before the Sandiganbayan for the alleged misuse of funds, their colleagues said yesterday.
Senators Francis Escudero, Grace Poe, Antonio Trillanes IV, Joseph Victor Ejercito and Alan Peter Cayetano stressed the need for Enrile, Estrada and Revilla to get due process and speedy hearings.
But the five senators expressed varying opinions on the call of Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales for the Supreme Court to create two special divisions for the Sandiganbayan to exclusively and continuously try the cases of plunder and graft filed against those linked to the scam.
“Let us hope that all the accused be given due process and their day in the court. Let us hope that this gives them the chance to defend themselves in a fair trial,” Ejercito, half-brother of Estrada, said. Escudero said he does not see anything wrong with the creation of special courts as long as the other cases pending before the anti-graft court will not be disrupted by the pork barrel scam trials.
“That is up for the Sandiganbayan or the Supreme Court to decide,” Escudero said in a text message to The STAR.
Trillanes and Cayetano also backed the ombudsman’s recommendation. “I support the proposal to create special courts so that these will be expedited without necessarily compromising due process,” Trillanes said.
Cayetano is not ruling out the possibility that the resolution of the cases might last beyond the term of President Aquino if pursued under the regular Sandiganbayan processes.
He said the cases should be decided in the last two years of the Aquino administration because these might be overturned by the opposition if they win the presidency in 2016.
Cayetano noted that in the plunder case of former president Joseph Estrada, a special criminal court was created by former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to speed up his trial. Estrada was indicted for pocketing jueteng funds, but Arroyo eventually granted him presidential pardon.
Poe, for her part, said she defers to the wisdom of the Supreme Court on the matter of creating special divisions to handle the pork barrel scam cases.
Conflicting rulings
At the House of Represen-tatives, senior lawmakers strongly opposed the creation of several special divisions of the Sandiganbayan for the scam cases, saying this could lead to conflicting rulings or even persecution of the accused.
Rep Elpidio Barzaga of Dasmariñas City in Cavite warned that each division is separate and independent and “therefore, the possibility of difference in rulings like petitions for bail, house or hospital arrests, existence of probable cause to issue warrants of arrest and other incidents” could arise even if the accused as well as the witnesses are the same in the cases to be tried by each court.
“It is even possible that in one court, it is a judgment of conviction and a judgment of acquittal on the other court,” Barzaga, a lawyer, said. He also described as “a very real danger” the possibility of several trips of the same witnesses of both the prosecution and the defence and discrepancies in their testimonies in the special divisions.
He said an experienced trial lawyer will use the inconsistent statements to impeach the credibility of the witness or the accused. He said as a compromise, and in order not to unduly confuse the public in the event of conflicting orders from two special courts, it would be more prudent to have one instead of two new divisions.
He said based on current statistics, one division in the Sandiganbayan handles, on the average, 300 cases and therefore, one special court could manage effectively all the present scam cases. Parañaque City Rep. Gustavo Tambunting said he is against the formation of special courts “because justice and equality are not observed here.”
“Of the many, many cases in the Sandiganbayan, why only this case? Other cases also have taxpayer’s money involved. If we really want to fight corruption and put the corrupt in jail, then make the judicial process speedy in all cases, not just this one just because it is media savvy,” Tambunting said.
Navotas City Rep Tobias Tiangco, secretary-general of the United Nationalist Alliance, said no one can dispute the need for a speedy trial but whether it would be fair and impartial was greatly doubtful.
Quezon City Rep Winston Castelo, however, said the scam is “a unique corruption issue where the highest and mighty are allegedly involved in the raid of the national coffers”. “The ombudsman’s suggestion addresses the need for speedy trial. Political persecution exists in the mind of people who don’t understand speedy trial,” Castelo said.
The head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines also urged the government to be fair in investigating and prosecuting the pork barrel fund anomaly.
CBCP President and Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said “political affiliations” should not lead to selective prosecution of officials involved in the scam. “Everybody culpable, whatever their political affiliations may be, should be investigated and, if so warranted, indicted. When justice is selective, it is not justice at all,” he said.
The Philippine Star
