Philippine government defiant on Arroyo travel ban

The Philippine government insisted Wednesday ex-president Gloria Arroyo must stay in the country to face a graft probe, defying the Supreme Court that ruled she was free to seek medical care abroad. Arroyo, 64, was stopped from flying to Singapore on Tuesday night after she was escorted into Manila airport in a wheelchair and wearing a neck brace to support her spine that she says is weakened due to a rare bone disease. Her dramatic attempt to leave came hours after the Supreme Court overturned a travel ban that President Benigno Aquino's administration put in place last week as it prepared to charge her with vote rigging and corruption. Arroyo returned to hospital after a two-hour stand-off at the airport that was broadcast live on television, but her spokeswoman said she would try again on Thursday to leave after a day recovering from her ordeal. "We have decided that she should rest today and we will fly to Singapore tomorrow," spokeswoman Elena Bautista Horn told ABS-CBN television. Arroyo's husband, Jose Miguel, who is also being investigated for alleged corruption and was similarly banned from leaving the country, expressed outrage as he left Manila airport with his wife on Tuesday night. "This is no longer injustice, this is already cruelty," he said. However Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said Arroyo's medical condition was not life threatening, and insisted the travel ban on the ex-president would remain because the government suspected she wanted to flee into exile. "We will not allow her to leave unless there is a medical emergency. That is clear," de Lima told reporters Wednesday, adding the government had asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision. But Supreme Court spokesman Midas Marquez warned that the government was in clear breach of an order from the highest judicial authority in the country. "It was expressly stated that it is effective immediately and continues to be so until further orders from this court," he told AFP. "I don't think it's susceptible to any other interpretation." Marquez said those who refused to enforce the court's ruling risked being charged with contempt, punishable by six months in prison. The court ruled on Tuesday that Arroyo was free to travel primarily because she had not been charged with any crime and was entitled to a presumption of innocence. Arroyo, who was president from 2001 to 2010, faced wide-ranging allegations of corruption and vote-rigging while she was in power, but survived repeated impeachment attempts with the support of allies in parliament. She has repeatedly denied all the allegations. Aquino, who succeeded Arroyo in June last year after securing a landslide election victory on an anti-corruption platform, made prosecuting Arroyo one of his top priorities. But his efforts have stumbled repeatedly, with one of the biggest blows coming in December last year when the Supreme Court ruled a "Truth Commission" he set up to investigate Arroyo was also unconstitutional. Nevertheless, Aquino has said in recent weeks that he expected Arroyo would be charged with corruption and electoral fraud before Christmas, crimes that could lead to life in jail. He and de Lima said last week when they announced the travel ban that they suspected she was using her medical condition as a ruse to flee the country and avoid prosecution. But Arroyo's lawyer, Ferdinand Topacio, repeated on Wednesday that Arroyo and her husband did not intend to flee into exile. "My clients have already said they will return. We have already said we will obey the law," he said.