CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – A group called Kapampangan Manalakaran, Inc. (KMI) in this province called on the Aquino administration to treat former president, now Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo “like a common offender.”
The group, composed of “well-meaning Kapampangans involved in the quest for good governance and ethical leadership” in the province for years now, also addressed itself to other “Cabalens” of the former president, asking them not to be “blinded either by fraternal or even communal link with CGMA (Arroyo).”
These were contained in a manifesto issued yesterday by KMI through lawyer MaieTiglao-Cayanan after another group of Kapampangans, led by the Pampanga Mayors’ League, issued another manifesto seeking house arrest instead of government facility detention for Arroyo who is facing electoral sabotage charges.
“We, the Kapampangan Manalakaran, assert that Mrs. Arroyo should be treated by the Aquino administration, the Commission on Elections, and the Supreme Court in the same manner like a common offender,” the manifesto said.
It noted that “her being a representative, or even her being a former president, does not put her over and above us ordinary citizens.”
KMI said that exempting Arroyo from the usual prescriptions of the law “would send a wrong signal to every Juan or Juana de la Cruz especially the poor.”
“That would be a source of shame particularly to the Kapampangans she represents,” the group said, adding that a privileged treatment of Arroyo would convey the message that “the rich and powerful can do anything in this country for anyway they can hire the best and brightest lawyers in the land to defend them from the law and that the poor have no other fate but to languish in jail.”
KMI said “it is our sublime duty to our children, grandchildren and the generations to come that she and her family, including her accomplices, be made liable for everything they had unlawfully done to our beloved country and province.”
