Supreme Court (SC) Justice Marvic Leonan has accused his fellow magistrates of failing to see the evidence when they acquitted former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of plunder.
“If any, what the majority reveals as insufficient may be the ability of the judiciary to correctly interpret the evidence with the wisdom provided by the intention of our laws on plunder and the desire of the sovereign through a Constitution that requires from public officers a high degree of fidelity to public trust,” he stated in his dissenting opinion.
“We diminish the rule of law when we deploy legal interpretation to obfuscate rather than to call out what is obvious,” he added.
Leonen explained that the P366 million were disbursed as additional Confidential and Intelligence Fund (CIF) from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) only after Arroyo approved the requests to release them.
“She bypassed layers of supervision over the PCSO. The approvals were in increasing amounts and each one violating established financial controls. The former President cannot plead naivete. She was intelligent and was experienced,” he said.
“The scheme is plain except to those who refuse to see,” Leonen stressed./http://politics.com.ph
