MANILA, 29 July 2003 — Police arrested a former aide of ousted Philippine President Joseph Estrada and charged him yesterday with allegedly supporting a failed power grab last weekend as President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered a probe into the roots of the mutiny.
The coup d’etat case against Ramon Cardenas, the former deputy executive secretary of Estrada, was filed late yesterday by police and National Bureau of Investigation agents before the Justice Department.
Cardenas was arrested yesterday in a predawn raid on his house in the financial district of Makati, where police seized high-powered firearms, ammunitions and other items allegedly belonging to nearly 300 renegade soldiers who joined Sunday’s mutiny.
The raid occurred a few hours after the rogue soldiers returned to their barracks late Sunday, after laying siege on a shopping complex in Makati, and wiring the area with explosives in a bid to force Arroyo to step down. Aside from high-powered firearms and ammunition, other items discovered in Cardenas’ home were rucksacks, armbands, cellular phone cards, first-aid kits and banners with the emblem of renegade soldiers. Abraham Espejo, Cardenas’ lawyer, insisted that his client was innocent of the charges and ready to “face the matter before the court”.
“At this time we have nothing to say except that we believe our client is innocent,” said Espejo. “We believe he’s a victim of political persecution.”
Arroyo vowed to go after the mutineers and their political backers, while also promising to investigate the grievances of the disgruntled soldiers. She said she would create an independent commission that would investigate the motives behind the 19-hour insurrection “and the provocations that inspired it”.
“Such actions are deplorable and will be met with the full force of the law, including their political component,” she said in her State of the Nation address at the opening of Congress. “Yet they signal an underlying problem that we need to address.”
