NEWS ANALYSISSC poised to decide on Revilla bail, a Duterte campaign promiseBy: John Nery - @jnery_newsstand
INQUIRER.net
December 05, 2016
Sen. Bong Revilla in 2014, on his way to his arraignment on plunder charges. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/RAFFY LERMA
Last January, while campaigning in Bacoor City, presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte promised Cavite voters that their former governor, Sen. Bong Revilla, would be released on bail if he becomes president. Today, Supreme Court justices are meeting to discuss the Revilla case for plunder, a capital and therefore non-bailable offense; tomorrow the court formally deliberates on the senator’s petition for bail. As it did in the case of Gloria Arroyo and the Marcos burial, will the Court help President Duterte keep another of his campaign promises?
The Sandiganbayan anti-graft court has twice rejected Revilla’s petition for bail in his pork barrel case, in large part because the senator had admitted in writing that the signatures in 168 key documents were either his or his representative’s. A reversal of the Sandiganbayan’s finding of “strong evidence†— the standard required to deprive a petitioner in a capital case of the constitutional right to bail — would be a shock to the judicial system. It would demoralize prosecutors and undermine the Supreme Court’s own standing. But under the present Court, it would not be unprecedented.
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