DAVAO CITY, 4 May — Not all allies of President Gloria Arroyo agree with the series of arrests the government want against alleged power grabbers.
Senate President Aquilino Pimentel Jr. made his to Arroyo to just “slow down” the police and the military in arresting people charged for inciting to sedition and other offenses, including his senatorial colleagues who are running for re-election.
Pimentel, the supposed Erap friend who made himself the “crying senator” during the impeachment trial of Joseph Estrada in January when 11 senators opposed to open the second controversial envelop that led to the ouster of Estrada.
“As the president of the Senate, I feel it is my duty to raise these concerns even if there is no love lost between me and Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Gregorio Honasan,” he said.
Pimentel and Enrile engaged in personal and legal tussles in a past senatorial race over the issue of “dagdag-bawas” ( add-subtract) which the latter won.
“They have made life miserable for me in the past, and now we find ourselves on opposite sides of the partisan political divide,” he added.
Pimentel, a lawyer, said the accused should first be given the right of preliminary investigation in which they are informed of the accusations against them and are given the right to rebut these charges.
Pimentel made in his statement e-mailed to the local media. “What I remember of my criminal law is that persons accused of crimes may be arrested without warrants of arrest while they are in the act of committing the crimes or immediately after they had committed the said crimes,” he explained.
But in the case of Enrile and Honasan, even if they are “ friends or political opponents,” Pimentel stressed that his fellow senators are still entitled to what the Constitution and the laws guarantee to the people of the country.
“Nobody is above or below the law”, Pimentel said.
Davao City Mayor Ben de Guzman supported Pimentel’s earlier statement on television that jailed former President Joseph Estrada should be given a chance to appear on national TV to make an appeal to his loyalists to calm down and not to resort to violence to express their grievances.
“Estrada is the rallying point here”, de Guzman said adding, “Let him talk on TV so he can appeal for sobriety.”
