Justice Secretary Leila de Lima has debunked the allegation of international human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin-Clooney, wife of actor George Clooney, that former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is politically being persecuted by the Aquino administration. “Arroyo’s fate is a judicial matter,” de Lima said on Wednesday.
De Lima also disputed the arguments raised by Mrs. Clooney in seeking the intervention of the United Nations to pressure the government to release the former president from detention over humanitarian reasons.
De Lima bewailed the filing of the case against the Philippine government before the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights last month over alleged inhuman treatment on Arroyo as a “flamboyant gesture” that “only reflects the paucity of (Arroyo’s) cries of political persecution.”
De Lima stressed that the complaint against the Philippine government before the UN body is based on a wrong premise.
Although the government has not officially received a notice of the UN complaint, the Justice Secretary said that Mrs. Clooney, who volunteered to lawyer for Arroyo, could be barking up the wrong tree in impleading the executive department when the cases against the former leader are pending with the courts.
In defending the Aquino administration, De Lima explained that the continued detention of Arroyo is by virtue of an order issued in Nov. 2013 by the First Division of the Sandiganbayan, which is hearing the plunder charges against her over the alleged misuse of P366 million ($8.2 million) from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) during her term.
“The Executive is not involved in either the prosecution or judicial determination of Arroyo’s plunder case. The prosecutor in said case is the Ombudsman, an independent constitutional office. On the other hand, the Sandiganbayan, as part of the Judiciary, is under the Supreme Court,” she said.
De Lima, who also served as chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights during the Arroyo administration, said there seems to be need to remind Clooney of the workings of the Philippine criminal justice system.
“If (Clooney) is charging the government of arbitrarily depriving Rep. Arroyo of her liberty, she must direct her petition to the judiciary, since the Aquino administration is not responsible for the fact that the judiciary does not subscribe to her claim that her continued detention is a result of political persecution. The judiciary remains independent of the Executive, and it continues to decide cases not on the basis of politics, from which it is insulated, but on the legal merits of each case,” she added.
De Lima disputed the claim of Clooney that the government has violated Arroyo’s human rights because of her continued detention despite her illness, particularly “multilevel cervical spondylosis” or the wearing of the bones.
“Under international human rights standards, a commitment or detention order issued against an accused in accordance with a State’s independent judicial processes is recognized as a valid cause for restraining one’s liberty. There is no question that under no circumstances is Rep. Arroyo’s detention for the non-bailable crime of plunder violative of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” she said.
De Lima reminded Clooney that her client must first exhaust all available domestic remedies – including filing of petition before the Supreme Court – before she could file a complaint with the UN.
“In the meantime, she is not without recourse to pursue whatever relief she feels she is entitled to, whether to move for medical treatment abroad before the Sandiganbayan, or to continue questioning before the Supreme Court the denial of her motion for bail,” she said.