CLARK FREEPORT – “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”
Thus, said a group of Kapampangans seeking the release from hospital arrest of former President and Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (CGMA) through a resolution that will be presented in congress.
The resolution will be submitted through Kapampangan congressmen in the House of Representatives when it opens on July 22 “declaring the strong sense of Congress urging the immediate transfer of custody of the Honorable Representative from the 2nd District of Pampanga, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to the House of Representatives.”
According to the resolution, CGMA was “elected overwhelmingly despite her continuing arrest and detention in a government hospital awaiting trial for cases brought against her by the Ombudsman on the one hand and the Commission on Elections and Department of Justice on the other.”
The group said the arrest and detention of CGMA has resulted in the “denial and deprivation of her constituents in Pampanga of their representation in the legislative body.”
They also said “her continued detention, barred as she were from meeting with mediamen, has resulted in mental torture and physical debilitation while she remains confined to her wheelchair, making her unable to discharge her duties as a duly elected Representative to the august chamber.”
She was also “barred from exercising her right of suffrage as a citizen of the Republic and attending congressional sessions and deliberations and hearing the wishes and aspirations of her constituents.”
The resolution said CGMA “should be granted the presumption of innocence as she has not been convicted of any crime imputed to her and it is the Constitutional duty of the Congress of the Philippines to ensure and guarantee the safety, welfare and well-being, not only of the people in general, but also, of its members, even those charged with crimes sans conviction, considering their official mandates as the elected representatives of the sovereign people of the Republic of the Philippines.”
The resolution also said “there is a compelling reason for Congress to seek the transfer of custody of the Honorable Gloria M. Macapagal-Arroyo to the Congress of the Philippines, where she rightfully belongs, as mandated by her constituents.”
The resolution resolved that CGMA be allowed to resume her duties as duly elected representative of the 2nddistrict of Pampanga while cases against her are still awaiting trial.
The release from hospital arrest of CGMA is now a growing consensus among Kapampangans especially in the second district which comprises the municipalities of Guagua, Sasmuan, Sta. Rita, Porac, Lubao and Floridablanca.
Kapampangans believe CGMA should be free to choose her own doctor or doctors and the hospital that she may wish to be confined in accordance with her basic human rights.
“We are law-abiding citizens, religiously paying our taxes,” said a businessman from Floridablanca.
“As things go now, we are deprived of representation in the House, and as enshrined in jurisprudence, ‘taxation without representation is tyranny.’ Thus the compelling need to release CGMA to the custody of the House, if only to say we are a democracy.”
“No taxation without representation” is a slogan which originated during the 1750s and 1760s that summarized a primary grievance of the British colonists in the Thirteen Colonies, which was one of the major causes of the American Revolution.
In short, many in those colonies believed that, as they were not directly represented in the distant British Parliament, any laws it passed taxing the colonists were illegal under the Bill of Rights and were a denial of their rights as Englishmen.
Only a tyrant can impose his will on the people in an undemocratic manner as shown by the continued detention of CGMA under hospital arrest, said a trader.
