No matter how a former government official commits abusive and criminal acts while in office, followed by prosecution and incarceration after stepping out of office, there are rabid partisans who will express their support and sympathy either out of misplaced loyalty, or out of gratitude for past favors or out of ignorance of the past misdeeds.
When such government official is acquitted by reason of failure of the prosecution to prove the guilt of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt, the partisans, as well as even those who genuinely pity the accused who has been clamped to jail before the acquittal pour out their sympathetic sentiments claiming that the detainee has been imprisoned unjustly for many years before being acquitted, as in the case of former senator and justice secretary Leila de Lima.
Charged with three drug cases, she was jailed in 2016. Despite scoring two acquittals, with the last remaining drug case still pending she remains languishing behind bars, although relatively with less restrictive movements and enjoying some privacy being confined solo in her jailhouse, unlike ordinary convicts who suffer more.
Given the change in the political environment from the time of her incarceration, where fortunes are altered for various reasons, it will not be surprising if she will be again exonerated in her last court case.
Sympathizers lament that her six years of being deprived of freedom is undeserved and unjust since she has been acquitted in two cases and most likely will snatch another judicial victory unless the trying court strictly follows the rules on evidence.
Let us grant that indeed she is really innocent in the drug cases filed against her, is it correct to say that her six years of being deprived of her liberty is an injustice? The answer must be negative because the law of karma applies to her.
The accused has to pay a karmic debt she owes to former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. For those who have forgotten, let us revisit the past, particularly 15 November 2011. On that day, accompanied by her husband, former First Gentleman, and son, Congressman Mikey Arroyo, the former President, in an ambulance arrived at the Manila International Airport. She was wheeled into the departure VIP lounge wearing a face mask and a neck brace. Armed with a Supreme Court restraining order overturning an earlier travel ban issued by the late former President Benigno Aquino III, their lawyers tried to persuade the Immigration officials to allow them to depart for Singapore for medical treatment of a bone ailment The accused, as then-Secretary of Justice, in willful, brazen and blatant defiance of the Supreme Court order, commanded her subordinate officials in the Bureau Immigration, who of course complied, to prevent Arroyo from boarding the plane.
On 16 July 2012, a P366 million plunder charge was filed against her. On 12 October 2012, a warrant of arrest was issued against her by the Sandiganbayan, which granted her plea for a hospital arrest owing to her illness. She was a virtual prisoner at the hospital and deprived of her liberty until 19 July 2016 when the Supreme Court freed her after it dismissed the plunder case against her.
Undoubtedly, it was the accused who not only inhumanly stopped her from getting urgent medical treatment abroad and as the head of the prosecution arm of the Aquino government, but contributed greatly to her subsequent arrest and detention for more than four years.
Accused De Lima may have escaped her criminal culpability by reason of a flawed acquittal in the drug cases but she could not dodge her accountably for the illegal act of stopping FPGMA from seeking medical treatment abroad. Her continued detention despite her acquittal is a deserving substituted punishment for the cruel and criminal offense she committed against the former Chief Executive. Her acquittal is not a shield to the unstoppable and inexorable operation of the law of karma.
As an aside, this writer cannot fathom why FPGMA has not filed any criminal or administrative case or both against her tormentor, except to consider that the former has a forgiving heart.
It is also a wonderment why the Supreme Court, on its own initiative, has not sanctioned the criminal, contumacious, and outrageous act of the former government official, when her act was in open defiance of its restraining order.