IT’S INCREDIBLE. The pre-trial set last Monday on the criminal cases against Imelda Marcos for her alleged dollar accounts abroad without the permission of the Central Bank was re-set by the regional trial court of Manila to Jan. 22 next year.
The reason was the failure of the prosecution to submit the required documents to support its accusation. The two cases are among several others involving the accused’s supposed dollar accounts in Switzerland amounting to billions of dollars. The cases were filed in 1992, more than 10 years ago.
Trial of the cases was delayed because of the attempts of the accused to have them dismissed by the Court of Appeals and later the Supreme Court. These efforts were unsuccessful but they did benefit her for delaying her trial. The two cases were recently set for pre-trial, with the warning that Imelda would be arrested if she failed to appear.
Imelda did show up, with her usual troops of supporters, but without her accustomed ladies-in-waiting and male counterparts. They have left Imelda’s court for what they called her abandonment of the poor despite her reported collection of P2 biliion as out-of-court settlement with the PLDT.
Imelda has denied this largesse, but she no longer has the ear of her former friends who used to be her steadfast defenders. However, she retains the noisy allegiance of the members of the bakya crowd who accompanied her to the court last Monday to demonstrate their affection for their Madame.
The reason for the re-setting of the pre-trial (and consequently of the trial proper of the two cases) is hard to understand. State prosecutor Nilo Mariano, when asked to produce the documents to prove the government’s case, said he did not have them at that time. Judge Oscar Barrientos, who must have been puzzled by the answer, then re-scheduled the trial for next year,.
As the prosecution fully knew, it had the burden of proving its allegations albeit only with prima facie evidence at the stage of the proceedings. But even at that stage, the accused would enjoy the presumption of innocence, notwithstanding the strength of the supposed evidence against her. The trouble, though, is that such evidence was not presented at all, leaving the court no choice except to postpone the pre-trial and further delay the trial.
How State Prosecutor Mariano could have forgotten to bring the vital documents with him boggles the imagination. The cases were filed as early as 1992, which means, or should mean, that the government was ready as early as that year to prosecute the accused with the needed evidence already in its hand. That was 1992, or 10 years ago. Yet, on Dec. 10, 2002, the prosecutor handling the two cases informed the court that he did not have the documents needed to convict the accused.
So what happened to those papers? Did they quickly vanish during that period of hibernation? Or were they there all the time in the government files except that, for some unfathomable reason, Mariano forgot to bring them with him at the pre-trial. How could he have forgotten such vital evidence? Chief State Prosecutor Jovencio Zuño must be sharing this curiosity.
No wonder Imelda gloated with her usual public piety, “The voice of the people is the voice of God,” she said, suggesting that the ineptness of the prosecution represented divine intervention in her favor. She followed this revelation with the insufferable mantra of the pretentious politician: “I do hope I am free of all these so I can really serve and help the people.”
This is not the only time Imelda has claimed the voice of God as the instrument of her salvation. Apart from the scandalous fact that the majority of the cases against her have been sleeping the sleep of the just (or unjust), there is that questionable decision in the case of Imelda Marcos v. Sandiganbayan, 297 SCRA 95, where her conviction of graft and corruption by the respondent court was affirmed by the Third Division of the Supreme Court chaired by no less than Chief Justice Andres R. Narvasa. Imelda elevated the case to the Court en banc, which, against its own rules, accepted the appeal and later acquitted her.
That the decision dishonored the Supreme Court goes without saying but Imelda Marcos declared that it had spoken with the voice of God. For the record, the acquittal was written by Justice Purisima and concurred in by Bellosillo, Melo, Puno, Kapunan, Mendoza, Martinez and Quisumbing. The principal dissenter was Justice Flerida Ruth Romero, who was joined by Chief Justice Narvasa, Regalado, Davide and Panganiban, who wrote a separate dissenting opinion. VItug voted to remand the case.
Edsa I ousted the martial law regime in 1986 but none of its principal leaders have been called to account for their abuses despite the lapse of more than 16 years. The P23.5 billion tax deficiency adjudged by the Supreme Court against the Marcos heirs has yet to be fully collected even as Imelda Marcos continues to display her fabulous jewelry that rejects her pretense of poverty. She is the best proof of the frailty and ineffectiveness of our present justice system, which has become the despair of many concerned and indignant citizens.
Justice Isagani A. Cruz 