Ex-Philippines leader seized over poll rigging
MANILA, Friday
Philippines police arrested ex-president Gloria Arroyo at her hospital bed on Friday on charges of conspiring with a feared warlord to rig an election, an offence that could lead to life in jail.
The events capped a tumultuous week in Philippine politics that had seen the government block Arroyo, 64, from leaving the country after she arrived at Manila Airport wearing a neck brace and saying she needed medical care abroad.
The decision by the Commission on Elections to charge her today with rigging the 2007 senatorial elections also marked the high-point in President Benigno Aquino’s campaign to hold his predecessor to account for alleged graft.
“Mrs Arroyo is compelled to stay in the country and face the charges of electoral sabotage,” Justice secretary Leila de Lima told reporters after a Manila court issued an arrest warrant against the ex-president.
“(This case) has great implications not just to the integrity of our electoral system, but also to the very principles of democracy.
“It is our desire ... that the Filipino people are finally given the justice they duly deserve.”
Police then served the arrest warrant on Arroyo today night at a Manila hospital where her aides said she was being treated for a rare bone disease that had led to three unsuccessful spine operations this year.
However, senior superintendent James Bucayo, who served the arrest warrant, told reporters at the hospital that she would remain there until she was well enough to leave.
“We just put police guards outside her room,” he said.
Many corrupt acts
Arroyo, the country’s second female president who is now a congresswoman, had been accused of many corrupt acts, such as bribery, and efforts to rig elections during her time in power from 2001 until the middle of last year.
She defeated repeated parliamentary impeachment attempts and coup attempts over the allegations while she was president.
Aquino vowed after winning landslide elections last year that one of his top priorities during his term would be to bring Arroyo to justice.
The election commission said today that Arroyo had ordered the wide-scale tampering of ballots in the 2007 senatorial elections.
