Apart from electoral sabotage charges, former President and current Pampanga Second District Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo should expect around 20 cases filed against her, including plunder which is also a non-bailable offense when evidence of guilt is strong, Malacañang said Monday.
Office of Political Affairs Secretary Ronald Llamas said, “Alam ko kasi merong almost 20 na hinahanda na mga cases, plunder, electoral sabotage, et cetara. So, sa tingin ko in the next few days or weeks ay baka ‘yung mga kaso na yan, ay magsimula nang isampa ang mga yan."
The Palace appears to be making good on the promise President Benigno Aquino III made last Sept. 28 that cases would be filed one after the other against Arroyo by November.
Also on Monday, Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Teodoro Casiño, former congresswoman Liza Maza and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) chairperson Carol Araullo filed an urgent motion to resolve the complaint they filed against Mrs. Arroyo last September, and to immediately file a plunder case against her in relation to the allegedly anomalous national broadband deal (NBN) her administration entered into with the Chinese firm ZTE Corp. in 2007.
Arroyo was arrested last Friday for electoral sabotage, which carries a life sentence, at the St. Luke's Medical Center in Taguig, Metro Manila.
Over the weekend, Aquino assured Arroyo that she would be given the chance to defend herself in court over charges of electoral sabotage.
But Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago warned on Monday that “a movement within Malacañang that is following blind vengeance against Rep. Arroyo" is “putting President Aquino in legal peril." She told reporters that, “There is political persecution, there is no due process of law, and there is inherent bad faith in the timing of filing of the case in the regular RTC and consequent issuance of a warrant of arrest."
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