Category: Rules of Court

Rules of Court

Admissions, admissions; corroborating Jun Lozada

edermitaandgloria.jpg Right-clicked from www.ops.gov.ph

You don’t need lie-detector tests, you don’t need game shows and botox injections  and dog-and-pony exhibitions: You just need to listen. Jun Lozada’s testimony is being corroborated. You  just need to research and to listen.            

         The Deputy Executive Secretary of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo  today corroborated  the testimony of Jun  Lozada that indeed he gave P500,000 to  the witness last February 4, 2007 but explained he gave the money because Jun Lozada texted him he ran out of money and “was cold” and needed winter clothes.        

        Who is Presidential Deputy Executive Secretary Manuel Gaite? His name first figured in this incident when Jun Lozada testified that Gaite as Deputy Executive Secretary gave him antedated papers to travel. As everybody knows, when government employees travel on official time and purpose they always need an authority to travel (and i think they use  their red passport for official  travel, let’s ask the custodian of Jun Lozada’s passport to produce his passport). As i understand it, sometime during FVR’s time, in order to cut down  on junkets, the Office of the President had a memo centralizing the form for authority to travel of the entire bureaucracy to an office in Malacañang itself and the form had to be signed by a factotum in the office of the Executive Secretary (don’t worry, if you know a lawyer in Malacañang, it doesn’t get buried, it gets signed right away in time for your flight.)     

          How close is Manny Gaite to the Office of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo?

      

             A heartbeat.        

       

      Executive Secretary Ed Ermita who sits next to the President admitted last February 9 (www.inquirer.net by Michael Ubac) that : quote “Even before he (Jun Lozada) left for Hong Kong, I had information that he was being invited to the Senate hearing and that he didn’t want to attend. It’s the legal division under Gaite who attends to this matter of this nature. That’s my only instruction,” said Ermita. (from www.inquirer.net )     

        Ed Ermita again:  quote “ I told Gaite, (he) being the one in charge of legal division, to get in touch with (Environment) Secretary (Jose) Atienza because he is the immediate superior of the head of a subsidiary under the supervision of the DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources).” Closed-quote. (ibid)     

       In other words, Deputy Executive Secretary Manny Gaite is the trusted errand lawyer (that’s alright, my friends and i sometimes refer to ourselves as errand lawyers, we run  errands for  senior lawyers) of the Executive Secretary who sits right next to the President.        

         

      The website of the Office of the President shows him as an “honourable” Deputy Executive Secretary  of the Presidential Staff (the Palace factotums put “Hon.” as titles before their names, cheap thrills.)    

          Here is his working relationship in connection with Gloria, based on the website of the Office of the President:     1.)Her Excellency, Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Right below that: 2.)His Excellency Vice President Noli de Castro. Right below that: 3.) the Executive Secretary (Ed Ermita), then, 4)names of Cabinet Secretaries. 5)Then Presidential Advisers and Assistants. Then the Office of the President Staff which includes the 6)Honourable Deputy Executive Secretaries. Being Deputy Executive Secretary, Honourable Manny Gaite is under the direct supervision and control of the Executive Secretary; he takes his orders from Ed Ermita, and the latter, the Little President  of course sits right next to the President.   ermita.jpg Right-clicked from http://www.ops.gov.ph(of course we already illustrated how close he is to the Office of the President with Ed Ermita’s extrajudicial admissions).     

    A quick Google search of Manny Gaite (see? I told you, you don’t need klieg lights and botox injections for this, just research) showed that Manny Gaite’s career as Palace factotum spans more than nine years in Malacañang. He had been trusted enough with money, enough to make him handle grants and donations in the range of tens of millions of pesos. Based on a 1999 press release of the Office of the President  (www.ops.gov.ph ) Gaite in 1999 was  undersecretary of Presidential Committee on Flagship Projects and programs , and  was in charge of 6.6 million pesos worth of relief assistance to Sulu . From the Office of the President website in 1999: quote  “Well, as of now, a total of P6.6 million has been used to provide relief assistance to evacuation centers in Sulu,” he (DND Usec Conejos) said on JEEP ni Erap: Ang Pasada ng Pangulo, the radio-TV program of President Joseph “Erap” Ejercito Estrada.    

        Quote “Undersecretary Manuel Gaite of the Presidential Committee on Flagship Projects and Programs said that aside from providing relief assistance, the government also sees to it that other priority needs of displaced Sulu residents are taken care of. “ (from www.ops.gov.ph  )  There are also press releases in the Naga City Journal of his infrastructure projects in 2002 for Baao, Camarines Sur for Mayor Mel Gaite.        

         In other words, the trusted errand lawyer of Malacañang,  of Ed Ermita who sits right next to the President, trusted to handle funds in tens of millions of pesos for more than nine years in the Palace, was trusted enough to handle P500,000 to give to Jun Lozada; sure it’s impossible to trace fungibles like cold cash to the national treasury because you can turn around the paper work.  He said it was to help Jun Lozada for his conference in London. This (the payment or “loan”) after the Senate had issued a warrant of arrest for Jun Lozada. The trusted errand lawyer thought he would be on the clear with that. Hold on just a minute: You and Jun Lozada are not relatives, not BFF’s (best friends forever) and all your dealings with him have all been in an official capacity. Why would Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s Deputy Executive Seretary give half a million pesos to help someone for a conference in London, does the explanation make sense in the ordinary experience of people? You think? You’re on the clear?

         (And you don’t need botox injections  for that. You just need to listen.)      

Criminal law, Rules of Court

the confusely theorized search

edwardhopper.jpg

Edward Hopper. A Room in New York. National Gallery of Art. Right-clicked from www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2007 searched thru www.artcyclopedia.com

    [Update: As  of 4:11 pm or after i wrote the following post, NBI denied it conducted a search and said only one NBI agent was sent to the former office of ZTE deal witness Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada to deliver a letter asking for his papers such as his 201 file (– from ABS-CBN News Channel.) In any case, no independent determination has been made regarding the news report that a raid was conducted.]          

       The  only way that the warrantless search (“raid”) of the former office of ZTE deal witness Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada  conducted by the operatives of the National Bureau of Investigation could be legally justified is: if it were consensual, i.e., the lawful owners/ possessors/ occupants consented to the warrantless search. Of course, since he is no longer the president and CEO of Philippine Forest Corporation, someone else (an OIC or the corporate vice president or the building administrator or whoever is authorized by the articles of incorporation to succeed if no one has yet been appointed) has the authority to give that consent. If that consent was not given on the spot when the warrantless search was conducted, it would be fairly easy to “convince” that person in charge to say that the search was consensual (or to ratify it; or to not file any complaints against the NBI).   

        The rules require a warrant in case of a search by law-enforcement authorities; exceptions are: consensual searches, checkpoints (Valmonte vs. De Villa with three dissents), border searches (ports of entry, etc.); “stop-and-frisk” on probable cause; and search incident to a lawful arrest.      

       The DOJ Secretary said in an interview (www.abs-cbnnews.com) that he did not order the NBI to conduct such a warrantless search, but, he said, in any case , no warrant was necessary in that search because, he said, “a crime was being committed” (presumably in the office seached?) and therefore the law-enforcement authorities can  conduct a warrantless search; and that it was a public office and therefore no warrant was required.       

          What crime was being committed inside when the NBI broke into the premises and entered and searched the papers and effects? What crime?     

      If indeed a crime was being committed inside (what crime) who are the  malefactors?  Or those who are committing the crime. Who were committing the crime inside?  The employees? The officer-in-charge? Or, is it a crime that has no human malefactors? The crime was happening by itself without any malefactors? Geez, help me out here, maybe there’s such a thing: It was a crime that was happening by itself without any malefactors. The objects were moving by themselves and causing a crime to happen, don’t you get it?      

         Or maybe,  since what was searched was Mr. Lozada’s papers and effects (the DOJ secretary presumed so),  the DOJ secretary theorized that a crime was happening inside  because,  he thinks that Mr. Lozada was in the process of committing a crime when his papers and effects continue to be inside the building. What crime was that? The table drawers’s illegal possession of the papers and effects of Mr. Lozada. Yes, that’s the crime. Except that i don’t know whether the table  and drawers  were mirandized  before they/ these were arrested then searched.     

       Even the search for contrabands  (or drugs or illegally possessed guns) require a search warrant  UNLESS the contraband or drugs or gun are in plain view, under the “plain-view doctrine” , or they are on the surface and readily seen without a search.    

           Presumably, the papers and effects are not contraband; maybe the DOJ thinks they are evidence of something; but evidence of something, especially papers and effects, does not  a contraband  make (unless maybe if they were counterfeit money, but you still need a warrant for that unless as i said they were in plain view.)     

        (To summarize: I think the DOJ secretary is confusing “search incident to a lawful arrest”; and  breaking enclosures to effect a valid arrest (you have to make the lawful arrest before  the  search); and  the “plain-view doctrine.” I could just have said that in the beginning, you know,  instead of following through his convoluted logic and confused procedure by writing hyperboles  but i thought it was funny.)     

         What is probably hilarious is the DOJ secretary shooting his mouth off, again, for the nth time, without checking how in fact  the raid was conducted, and presuming the NBI agents went over his head, and accepting it was alright, because it involved Jun Lozada, it was  fine to bypass him; just like (if the testimony of Jun Lozada were true), when Lito Atienza last month assured Jun Lozada that he had talked to the Immigration Commissioner to just let him in without alert; the Immigration Commissioner being under the supervision and control of the DOJ secretary. But who cares  anyway if a powerful person  bypassed the DOJ secretary here and there and always went over his head?