Court okays hospital arrest for Enrile
PGH cardiologist warns the lawmaker is susceptible to stroke and heart attack due to his “irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, and hardening of the arteries due to high calcium deposits”
THE Sandiganbayan permitted yesterday Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, who is on trial for a nonbailable case of plunder, to remain in a Quezon City hospital until he is fit to be transferred in a regular jail.
In the resolution, the Sandiganbayan Third Division granted the request of Enrile to extend his stay at the Philippine National Police (PNP) General Hospital in Camp Crame, Quezon City.
In the separate concurring opinion written by Sandiganbayan Associate Justices Alex Quiros, he said that the condition of Enrile is life-threatening if he is placed in a regular detention facility.
“The likelihood of the serious but non-life threatening condition escalating and turning into life-threatening condition has the primordial consideration in the grant of accused Enrile’s motion… considering the undersigned has always considered paramount the rights of the accused to be presumed innocent to life, liberty and property and to the equal protection of the law, the undersigned yields and concurs as to the outcome,” Quiros stated.
Last Sept. 4, government doctors have recommended to the Third Division that Enrile should remain at the PNP hospital due to various health hazards.
Dr. John Añonuevo, a cardiologist from the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) said the lawmaker is susceptible to stroke and heart attack due to his “irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, and hardening of the arteries due to high calcium deposits.”
Another PGH physician, pulmonologist Dr. Leonora Fernandez, also recommended that Enrile should remain in the hospital instead of an ordinary jail since he had asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), which may lead to pneumonia. She said that narrowing of small airways in Enrile’s lungs has been observed.
Meanwhile, ophthalmologist Dr. Maria Florentina Fajardo-Gomez said that the former Senate president has “age-related macular degeneration,” which may lead to central blindness, which means, “not total blindness but the patient can only see in the periphery.”
All three PGH doctors have recommended to the court that Enrile should be confined in a tertiary hospital.
Enrile is facing plunder and multiple counts of graft charges in connection with the multi-billion peso “pork barrel” scam.
The lawmaker allegedly amassed P172.8-million in kickbacks from 2004 to 2010 by channeling his Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) allocations to non-government organizations of businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles, the suspected mastermind in the pork barrel scam. (John Carlo Cahinhinan-Sunnex)