Noynoy Aquino thinks prosecuting former Philippine President Gloria Arroyo is a popularity contest

By -
According to an Inquirer.net report it seems Philippine President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III sees public opinion and "support" as key to a successful prosecution of his predecessor, former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA)...
President Benigno Aquino III on Saturday night rallied the public behind his administration’s effort to prosecute former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for alleged electoral sabotage, while promising to accord her due process.

[...]

“This is just the start of the process. And it is very good to know that even from the start, even while I was outside the country, you are all behind me, especially on this issue,” he said.

“I know that I am not alone. As I think about your welfare, you continue to give me strength.”

But then the process of criminal prosecution is not one that is driven by a popular outcome. It proceeds on the basis of a rigorous examination of facts and an intelligent tying of these together into a logical conclusion.

Perhaps we can refresh the President's memory with this brief introduction on criminal procedure:
Criminal procedures are safeguards against the indiscriminate application of criminal laws and the wanton treatment of suspected criminals. Specifically, they are designed to enforce the constitutional rights of criminal suspects and defendants, beginning with initial police contact and continuing through arrest, investigation, trial, sentencing, and appeals.

Note that rule of that which is popular has no place in such a procedure.

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 20, 2011 at 4:07 PM

    It is not surprising that a president elected thru popularity contest will apply the same principle in the justice system. That's his own brand of rule of law and due process.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular this week

Leni Robredo has become a sad mechanical puppet and an embarrassment to Filipinos

By -
Image
Guess who has taken over Leila de Lima’s place on the anti-Duterte international speaking circuit? Watch this video that Leni Robredo made for an international NGO event in Vienna tomorrow. Warning: this will REALLY make your blood boil. If you have vertigo, sit down and take a deep breath before watching. You know what’s really sickening about this video? It’s not even the lies and exaggerations that Robredo is saying about what’s going on in the Philippines and how Pinoys feel about it (as if she’s in any position to speak for the Filipino people, who mostly hate her guts). It’s the hollowness and emptiness of the way she mechanically reads from a script that obviously someone else wrote. She’s making huge claims about thousands of people being summarily killed by police, but her eyes and voice are absolutely empty of emotion or conviction. She’s just a puppet playing a role, who doesn’t even understand what she’s doing or saying, she’s just mindlessly following her owner’
Read more

Response to Sass Rogando Sasot: Duterte has supporters who are not blind beholden emos

By -
Image
So Sass Rogando Sasot posted a reaction on her FB page to defend Andanar : Regarding the GRP Short article on Andanar being suspected as a “mole.” Ang premise nila eh si Andanar eh walang ginagawa to protect the “international image” of the president. FYI, in order for you to counter the PR of those who would like to bring down Duterte, you need to spend A LOT OF MONEY for international PR. Mahal po ang international PR. Si Duterte po ang ayaw gumastos for international PR. Yup, Duterte is not like PNoy’s admin who spent a filthy amount of tax payer’s money for international PR. I think someone on Get Real Post already pointed out before that Sasot is book-smart but lacks common sense. We see proof of that once again here. Does regularly monitoring and editing Duterte’s Wikipedia page to give foreigners more balanced info cost a lot of money? No, it doesn’t. It’s certainly cheaper than what Andanar is wasting every month printing a useless local monthly tabloid that reaches
Read more

Jo Lapira: youth wasted on Joma Sison's bankrupt communist ideology

By -
Image
“Youth is wasted on the young”, they used to say. If you send your daughter or son, to universities, like the University of the Philippines. You send him or her, to learn about the subjects, of the field, he/she is hoping to finish and graduate. Not waste his/her time on bankrupt political ideologies like communism. Jo Lapira, the NPA casualty is a good example. Her parents, may have been slaving to earn money to send her, to college and give her a good education, so that, after graduation, she could have a good job and a good career, to better her life. However, she wasted this opportunity in her life fighting for an ideology she hardly understood. She wasted her life; and now her life ends tragically, in a clash with the AFP. Those who still believe this communist ideology is the panacea of our country’s problems should realise that this communist ideology is a failed ideology. It has been tested, and the communist theory of workers’ utopia, is a Delusion, and a Mirage. What
Read more

Jose Rizal never had Tagalog in mind when he encouraged us to love our own language

By -
Image
Posted by a certain Chloe Santiago on the Facebook GRP Community Group : Jose Rizal died in 1896 and Tagalog was declared the official language of the Philippine only in 1937. This can only mean that Rizal wasn't really talking about Tagalog when he made this statement: "He who does not love his own language is worse than an animal and smelly fish." Indeed. Who made the arbitrary directive to make the Tagalog dialect the "National Language" to begin with? Furthermore, why have a "National Language" when Filipinos are already proficient in the global lingua franca of commerce and scientific achievement?
Read more