Palace: United Nations working group can’t meddle on Arroyo’s case

Despite her detention and deteriorating health, former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will file her certificate of candidacy (COC) for a third term as Pampanga 2nd District Representative next week, her laywer said.

Coloma made this reaction over the opinion released by the United Nation Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD), which had found Arroyo’s hospital arrest as “arbitrary and violative of the worldwide law on human rights”.

“Further, the Working Group recognized that the charges against Mrs. Arroyo are politically motivated, since she is detained “as a result of the exercise of her right to take part in government and the conduct of public affairs” and ‘because of her political… opinion, ‘” it continued.

Former president now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will seek a third and final term in 2016. Arroyo was president from 2001-2010 before being elected to Congress.

Arroyo was ordered arrested in October 2012 on charges of plunder for allegedly stealing from state lottery funds.

She asked the world body to act quickly on the supposed persecution of Arroyo, who has already been under detention for three years for corruption.

Arroyo’s legal counsels have stressed that Philippine law precludes the courts from considering a range of factors that must, under worldwide human rights law, be taken into account in deciding whether pre-trial detention is necessary.

Coloma said the Philippines as a signatory to the global Convention on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, abides by its worldwide obligations and ensures that all individuals are accorded due process under its laws.

Throughout her detention, Arroyo has also been barred from accessing any means of communication, including Internet access, a mobile phone or a laptop computer, which “preclude her from performing her role as a democratically elected representative” of a district of Pampanga.