Former President Joseph Estrada lauded the “hospital arrest” yesterday of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and said he wished her a speedy recovery so she can serve her sentence for the non-bailable crime of electoral sabotage.
“I feel vindicated,” Estrada said, adding, ”Let’s hope and pray for her continued recovery so that she can serve fully her sentence.”
“Now that the case is filed it’s about time that justice should be served,” Estrada pointed out.
It was Arroyo who sent Estrada to jail after she ousted him from office in January 2001. Estrada was charged with plunder, also a non-bailable crime, before the Sandiganbayan.
Estrada was in Singapore where The STAR reached him for comment about the imminent arrest of Arroyo after electoral fraud charges were formally filed in court. Ironically, Arroyo tried to fly to Singapore last Tuesday for a medical appointment but was prevented by airport authorities to board her plane, and she also had a booking to fly to the island nation yesterday afternoon.
Asked if his presence in Singapore had anything to do with checking on Arroyo’s planned trip there, Estrada quipped: “I am (her) advance party here.”
Levity aside, Estrada disclosed he was invited by Singaporean friends for a speaking engagement and a meeting with the Filipino community there.
He said he received the news of the arrest warrant of Arroyo from his son, Senate president pro tempore Jinggoy Estrada. The senator was arrested and jailed with his father on April 5, 2001, or three months after Estrada was ousted from office by Arroyo at the end of the EDSA-2 revolt. The arrest warrant was served on the elder Estrada at his residence at Polk Street, Greenhills in San Juan.
He recalled he and Jinggoy were taken straight to jail in Camp Crame, Quezon City, where their mug shots were taken.
Later, father and son were transferred to “barbed-wired” detention facility in Sta. Rosa, Laguna before subsequently taken to “hospital detention” at the Veterans’ Medical Center in Quezon City.
Jinggoy was released on bail in 2004 when he ran and won in the May 2004 elections.
Estrada was allowed to stay in detention at his own rest house in Tanay, Rizal until his plunder conviction on Sept. 12, 2007.
Arroyo granted Estrada executive pardon on Oct. 25, 2007. Estrada ran but lost to President Aquino in the May 2010 presidential elections.
Estrada posed no objection to the possible “hospital detention” for Arroyo, who is currently confined at the St. Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig City where she underwent three spine surgeries this year.
“Let’s give it to her. She’s a sick lady,” Estrada pointed out.
According to Estrada, Arroyo should be detained, if not in Fort Sto. Domingo in Laguna where he was briefly detained, in a government hospital.
Asked if he would visit Arroyo in her “hospital detention,” Estrada quipped: “Why not? Arestado na s’ya, dadalawin ko s’ya (She has been arrested so I will visit her).”
Arroyo visited Estrada while he was in detention at the Veterans Hospital in Quezon City.
Jinggoy, for his part, even offered in jest the family rest house in Tanay, Rizal where his father was placed under house arrest during his plunder trial at the Sandiganbayan.
“We have a pony there which she can use to go around,” he said.
A day before he flew to Singapore, Estrada admitted he was in St. Luke’s in Taguig City not to visit Arroyo but to visit his daughter Jackie who gave birth to her third son.
Jackie was confined in a regular suite on the same floor as Arroyo.
“No, we did not visit Mrs. Arroyo. How and why will we do that? What would the people think of us, if we did,” Estrada remarked.
“We stayed barely an hour. We knew that Mrs. Arroyo was on the same floor, I can even see her aides around. But we just visited Jackie,” Estrada said.
Unlike what was done to him in 2001, Estrada cited Arroyo is still fortunate that President Aquino is “kind” to her.
“Mabait pa si P-Noy in the case of Gloria. They want to strengthen the cases against her to make sure all their evidence are strong. So it took them time,” Estrada noted.
Estrada welcomed the news of Arroyo’s arrest even after the Supreme Court earlier in the day granted her request for temporary restraining order (TRO) to stop the Aquino administration from imposing its travel ban on her while no formal charges were filed against her before the courts at that time.
“That’s within the law. It’s a technicality. So they (Aquino administration) are forced to speed up the case against her,” Estrada pointed out.
Estrada reiterated Arroyo is a flight risk unlike him, who was twice offered by Arroyo emissaries to sign a formal resignation letter and he would be allowed to go on self-exile abroad or else be sent to jail.
And twice, Estrada said, he rejected the Arroyo offer and was indeed sent to jail.
Estrada believed the arrest and detention of Arroyo would not lead to any constitutional or national security crisis in the country.
Jinggoy, however, said the arrest and detention of Arroyo is long overdue because of the many sins she had committed against the Filipino people.
