MANILA: Detained former Philippine president Gloria Arroyo is to spend Christmas at a military hospital after a court rejected her bid for a temporary reprieve, an official said Wednesday.
The 65-year-old will not be allowed to leave the Veterans Memorial Medical Centre over the holidays, said Sandra Palugay, a staff member of the Sandiganbayan special anti-graft court which handed down the ruling.
"There is a denial of the request of the former president," she told AFP, declining to give the court's reasons for its decision. Arroyo had asked to go home from December 21 to January 7 next year.
Her lawyer Anacleto Diaz expressed surprise at the ruling. He would not say what her legal team would do next.
Arroyo has been charged with plundering $8.8 million from state lottery funds during her years in office from 2001 to 2010.
She is free on bail on a second criminal charge of committing vote fraud for allegedly rigging the 2007 senatorial elections to ensure her allies won. She denies both charges.
Arroyo ended her time in power as one of the country's most unpopular presidents, amid allegations she had cheated to win elections, embraced feared warlords as allies and was involved in widespread corruption.
Her successor, Benigno Aquino, won a landslide election after vowing to fight corruption and prosecute Arroyo.
Since her arrest for vote fraud in November last year, she has spent most of her time under detention at a military hospital, where she was treated for a spinal disease that requires her to wear a neck brace.
Court resolutions to these cases are expected to drag for years in the country's slow justice system.
Arroyo continues to serve as a legislator after winning a seat in the lower house of parliament in the 2010 elections. (AFP)
