Makabayan senatorial bet and Nacionalista Party guest candidate Satur Ocampo today joined various sectors in condemning the Supreme Court decision allowing Pres. Arroyo to appoint justices of the Court despite the Constitutional ban on presidential appointments, saying it was part of plans to protect her from suit and allow a comeback via Charter change.
"Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's immediate plans are becoming more and more transparent as the days pass. With the SC decision, she will be able to hand-pick the next Supreme Court chief justice and another justice thereby making the Supreme Court a purely Arroyo-appointed and subservient Court," Ocampo said.
"The prerogative to appoint the next chief justice and another member of the Court is in line with Mrs. Arroyo's over-all self-protection strategy when her term is over. Arroyo wants to pack the Court with her appointees and Congress with her loyalists in case an opposition president is elected so that she will be safe from charges filed in court and from Congressional investigations. It also paves the way for a return to power as prime minister via cha-cha which an Arroyo-controlled Court will most likely uphold," Ocampo stressed.
"In her desperation, she has not spared the party-list system and is maneuvering to have her allies stand as standard bearers of bogus party-lists," Ocampo added.
Ocampo said that Mrs. Arroyo is determined to weasel through the numerous criminal charges that are certain to be thrown her away the moment she is out of office. "She is pegging her hopes that by appointing the next chief justice, she will be able to escape criminal prosecution for all the scandals that her administration has been involved in the last nine years," he said.
"Macapagal-Arroyo is hell-bent on covering all bases before she steps down from the presidency, and all her efforts are aimed at two objectives: 1) escaping criminal liability; and 2) perpetuating herself in power by becoming prime minister. This is precisely why she is running for Congress, and why her allies are infiltrating the party-list system. The shocking greed for power and shamelessness is galling," Ocampo said.
"Macapagal-Arroyo will not escape the Filipino people's judgment and the verdict of history. We cannot and should not rest until she had been made to account for all of her crimes and to stop her from committing more," he said.
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