Dismissed justice: FG Miguel Arroyo behind my ouster

Dismissed justice: FG behind my ouster


By Aries Rufo, Newsbreak, abs-cbnNEWS.com | 09/16/2008 6:05 PM
For three hours, the mobile phone of Court of Appeals Justice Vicente Roxas kept on ringing but the magistrate was not in the mood to answer the call. It was the afternoon of May 30, and the corporate war between the Lopez group and the Government Insurance System had just reached the CA. A raffle held earlier in the day had picked Roxas as the ponente of the case.

The caller ID displayed the name of a ranking government official, who is known to Roxas. He then received a text message with clear instructions: for him to decide in favor of GSIS over the Meralco case. The instruction, the text said, was from the First Gentleman Miguel “Mike” Arroyo. The text said this was “for the Filipino people.

"I should have accepted the call,” Roxas said, with a tinge of regret and partly in jest.

We interviewed Roxas Monday afternoon and asked him to confirm a report we gathered that Mr. Arroyo tried to reach him when the Meralco case landed on his lap. He hedged at first, but related the attempts to reach him through his mobile phone.

Roxas said his refusal to take the call could have angered the powers-that-be and thus began the orchestrated drive to destroy his reputation. “You destroy the ponente, you destroy the (Meralco decision),” Roxas said.

The 8th division of the CA had ruled that the Securities and Exchange Commission has no jurisdiction over the Meralco row, as it nullified the SEC cease-and-desist order against Meralco from validating the proxy votes of the Lopez group during the May 27 stockholders’ meeting.

It was a scheme he was only able to make sense of after the SC dismissed him from office last week. The rest of this story