Withdrawal of plea bargain set

MANILA, Philippines – Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez announced Thursday that her office, upon the prodding and recommendation of the Senate during its hearing, will file with the Sandiganbayan a manifestation to withdraw its proposed plea bargaining agreement (PBA) with beleaguered retired Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia who is facing a P300-million plunder case.

Gutierrez disclosed this after senators led by Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile; Sen. Franklin M. Drilon, a former Senate President; and Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, a constitutional expert, pressed her to change her intransigent position that the PBA had to be forged because the government’s case against Garcia was weak.

Enrile said the Ombudsman should review the PBA following new testimonies of two Senate resource persons – retired Lt. Col. George Rabusa, a former Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) auditor; and Heidi Mendoza, a former Commission on Audit (CoA) auditor – that strengthened the government’s case against Garcia.



Drilon, on the other hand, said the Ombudsman should immediately scuttle the PDA based on the testimonies of Rabusa before the Senate and Mendoza before the House of Representatives.

Stating that she is hurt by allegations that her office agreed to the PDA because of some “under the table deals,” Gutierrez said she would sit down with her prosecutors before making the formal manifestation before the Sandiganbayan.

Drilon said the manifestation must be filed soonest before the PDA, on the table of the Sandiganbayan, is acted upon.

“I have created a panel and ordered them to assess all the documents. Please allow us to assess the evidence and corroborating evidence. Of course there will be findings and as head of the Ombudsman I do not want to pre-empt findings of the investigation. We do not want to rush this,” she said.

Gutierrez was emphatic in stressing that there was no under the table deal with Garcia on the PBA, adding that former Ombudsman Aniano Desierto had entered into PBAs to accelerate the judicial process. She said she is hurt by allegations of immoral or illegal decisions by her office on the PDA issue.

In Thursday’s second public hearing, Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, said the PDA reached by government prosecutor of the Ombudsman and Gutierrez herself; and Garcia was defective in that it had no consent gotten from the offended party- the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

Solicitor General Jose Anselmo I. Cadiz told senators that his office has not given its consent to the PBA where Garcia would only return P130 million out of the alleged P300 million that Garcia allegedly amassed from AFP funds.

The amount is exclusive of the P50 million out of the P200 million United Nations funds that was supposed to have been remitted to the AFP.

Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin earlier testified that the AFP has not given its consent to the PBA.

Former Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo maintained that the consent of the President, being the commander in chief, should have been sought by the Ombudsman.

Rabusa had testified that he, Garcia, and Lt. Gen. Jacinto Ligot, AFP comptroller, worked together to amass P50 million from AFP funds for the “pabaon” (retirement send-off) for then retiring AFP chief of staff Gen. Angelo Reyes.

He also testified that he and the other AFP finance officers also gave P5 million to Reyes for his monthly allowance and P10-million “pasalubong” (welcome gift) to Reyes’ successors – Generals Diomedio Villanueva and Roy Cimatu.

The Guingona committee received a letter from Trisha Evangellsta, a lawyer of General Villanueva, that the general could not attend the hearing because he is taking care of the burial of his wife in Ilocos Sur.

On the request of Reyes that four senators inhibit themselves from hearing the PDA at the Senate committee, Guingona said this decision to attend the hearing or not “is the sole discretion of the senator requested to inhibit.”

Through his lawyer, Garcia said Senators Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada, Santiago, Antonio Trillanes IV and Francis “Chiz” Escudero should inhibit themselves from participating in the hearings “out of delicadeza (propriety)”.

“These senators have already prejudged his case by publicly making ‘derogatory pronouncements’ about his alleged involvement in corruption in the military. They have lost the ‘cold neutrality’ which is an element of due process,’’ Bonifacio Alentajan, Reyes’ lawyer, said.

“The four have already declared Reyes guilty. My client went there voluntarily as a resource person and explained what he knew about the plea bargaining of Maj. General Garcia. All of a sudden Sen. Estrada presented a ‘surprise witness’ (Rabusa) who proceeded forthwith to peddle one lie after another in an apparent demolition job against Reyes. They have likewise maligned my client with premature statements of Reyes’ guilt, despite the fact that Reyes is not an accused in a criminal proceeding,’’ Alentajan said.

Reyes had filed graft charges against Estrada and Rabusa before the Ombudsman for manifest partiality.

He also filed libel charges against Rabusa before the Quezon City Prosecutors’ Office for claiming in a TV interview that he and his family had pocketed military funds.

Guingona had expressed surprise why government prosecutors under the office of the Ombudsman had earlier objected to Garcias’ bail application, saying their case against Garcia was strong.

But these prosecutors made a 180-degree turn to favor Garcia’s bail application because their evidence was weak a day after special prosecutor Dennis Villa Ignacio, an anti-PBA proponent, retired from government service, Guingona pointed out.

Gutierrez said her office receives 10,000 cases annually and that PBA accelerates the judicial process.

Drilon, a former justice secretary during the administration of the late President Corazon C. Aquino, said state prosecutors should present Rabusa and Mendoza as new witnesses for the prosecution.

Meanwhile, Cebu Rep. Gabriel Luis R. Quisumbing has filed a resolution asking the House Committee on National Defense and Security to conduct an inquiry motu proprio on the military fund mess.

He filed House Resolution No. 910 calling for an inquiry into the AFP’s financial system.

“The Committee on National Defense and Security may motu proprio call for an investigation into these anomalies to correct flaws in the AFP’s system which makes it susceptible to corruption and conversion of AFP funds from its legitimate purpose,” Quisumbing, vice chairperson of the House Committee on National Defense and Security, said in a statement.

He said the sworn statement of former CoA auditor Mendoza at the House Committee on Justice should be a wake-up call for the lawmakers to immediately act on the issue.

Mendoza revealed a missing amount of P270 million from AFP funds representing reimbursements from the United Nations.

As the head of a team that conducted a financial audit of the AFP in 2004, she disclosed that she was informed that in February, 2001, a military officer “personally picked up” a $5-million check (roughly P220 million) from the UN headquarters in New York City In 2009, Navy Lt. Nancy Gadian revealed to the public that out of the P46 million provided by the Americans for the 2007 Balikatan war games, only P2.3 millions was released to Filipino troops.

source: Manila bulletin