Aquino: Raps vs Arroyo filed November

FACING FOREIGN MEDIA President Aquino answers questions from the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines during Wednesday’s forum at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Makati City. EDWIN BACASMAS

President Benigno Aquino III on Wednesday said charges would be filed next month against his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, even as reports emerged that she was suffering from a “rare disease” and that she would seek medical treatment in Germany this month.

“[T]he latest information that I have is by November we will be filing charges,” the President said in reply to a question at a forum with the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (Focap). He did not elaborate beyond saying that the details were “still being finalized.”
Pressed again on who would be charged next month, Mr. Aquino said: “You asked [about] my predecessor. So I said, ‘Yes, by November.’”

The ailing Arroyo, now the representative of Pampanga’s second district, is the subject of five plunder complaints filed in the Department of Justice (DOJ). She is afflicted with a condition called “hypoparathyroidism,” according to her husband, Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo.

The couple are also implicated in the purported poll fraud in 2004 and 2007 that is being investigated by a joint committee of the DOJ and the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
Plunder is a nonbailable offense. Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes has been quoted as saying that a prima facie finding in the poll fraud inquiry could result in the filing of charges of electoral sabotage, which is likewise nonbailable.

Mike Arroyo himself will be charged with graft this afternoon in connection with the secondhand helicopters sold as brand new to the Philippine National Police in 2009, Senator Panfilo Lacson said Wednesday.

Local News in the Philippines