Updated 9:28 p.m.) Former President and incumbent Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo attempted but failed to leave the country Tuesday night after Immigration officials at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal I (NAIA-I) barred her from boarding the day's last flight to Singapore.
This developed hours after the Supreme Court stopped government from enforcing watch list orders barring Arroyo and her husband, Jose Miguel, from traveling abroad, and an order by Justice Secretary Leila de Lima for Immigration and airport officials to keep Mrs. Arroyo from leaving the country.
"Kakila-kilabot at karima-rimarim ang ginagawa nila sa dating pangulo," said Mr. Arroyo's counsel, Ferdinand Topacio, on the government's action against Mrs. Arroyo.
In an interview on GMA News TV's State of the Nation (SONA), Topacio said De Lima's order smacked of disrespect to the Supreme Court. "This is against any norm of human decency," he said.
Mrs. Arroyo arrived at NAIA on board an ambulance and was placed on a wheelchair. A GMA News TV Live footage showed that the former president was accompanied by her spokesperson Elena Bautista-Horn and House Minority Leader Edcel Lagman.
De Lima, at a press briefing earlier in Malacañang, said the watch list orders stay until the government receives a copy of the TRO.
“The reported TRO has not been substantiated to exist pending the receipt by the respondents through the Office of the Solicitor General. Hence, the status quo, which is the existence of the watch list order against the Arroyos remains," she said.
She said she ordered the Bureau of Immigration and requested Transportation and Communications Secretary Manuel Roxas II to direct the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) and the NAIA management and personnel to enforce the watch list order.
“They should be on the lookout for the Arroyo couple's attempt to immediately leave the country on the strength of this TRO," De Lima said. - KBK/VS, GMA News
