GMA Out on Bail

Honestly, it's long overdue. The fact is the Commission on Elections does not have a case against the former president. The filing of the complaint was merely facilitated so she could not leave the country. Remember the Delima doctrine? (The SC-issued TRO cannot be carried out without express consent from the Secretary of Justice. In other words, the TRO cannot be implemented without Delima's assent.) The Supreme Court at that time issued a TRO which in effect, supposedly, restrains the government from preventing the former president from leaving the country. There was no case filed yet against GMA thus her constitutinal right to travel cannot be impaired by anyone even by the state. Nevertheless, you know what happened. She got stuck at the NAIA terminal since apparently the Secretary of Justice is more powerful than the SC. She can and in fact did disregard a lawful order of the highest court of the land and interestingly enough the chief executive agreed. So, to cure the obvious legal defect, they filed this bogus election-related complaint in a matter of hours to legitimize their illegal act. True enough, that same day, the judge issued a hold departure order which effectively rendered the SC-issued TRO moot. The TRO has transformed from being a powerful tool of preventing the commission of injustice to a mere scrap of paper - legally worthless.

Going back to the COMELEC-initiated complaint, they actually have only one witness whose testimony basically says, he "overheard" the former president saying over the phone to an election officer to give her party a 12-0 advantage against the opposition. The problem of this testimony is that it's bordering on heasay if in fact he "overheard" anything. Another point, it wasn't clear whether the president indeed directed the election officer to commit fraud. And why should we make someone languish in jail over some testimony which is not corroborated by anyone? Because of these circumstances, I personally think that the case is weak and the judge, in my opinion, is correct in granting GMA her temporary liberty.

If this administration is so bent on sending her to jail, what they should do is gather more evidence, investigate further, conduct more research and "produce" more witnesses who can corroborate what the lone witness testified to otherwise they should just shut up and stop wasting people's money in filing these baseless complaints.