FVR merrygoround!

Malacañang confident of FVR support
By Roy Pelovello ManilaStandardToday

MALACAÑANG yesterday said it is confident that former President Fidel Ramos will continue to support President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo even if he disagreed with her decision to pardon another former president, Joseph Estrada.

On Friday, shortly before Mrs. Arroyo granted executive clemency to Estrada, Ramos declared his opposition to pardoning her predecessor, warning that pardon might lead to Mrs. Arroyo’s downfall.

Another former president, Corazon Aquino, welcomed the decision to pardon Estrada after he was convicted to serve 40 years in prison for the crime of plunder.

Presidential Management Staff Chief Cerge Remonde also urged Ramos to exercise statesmanship and to support the administration for the good of the country.

“We highly respect former President Fidel Ramos. We trust in his high sense of statesmanship. While he may have disagreed on the pardon, we believe that he will continue to support what is good for the country—especially reforms and national unity,” Remonde said.

An administration ally in the Senate, Senator Joker Arroyo, said Mrs. Arroyo went overboard in pardoning Estrada, but admitted that it was futile to expect the courts to reverse the President’s order, since the authority to pardon “is absolute and exclusive to her.”

The senator told a radio interview that the order to pardon Estrada was “wrong,” and that if the President did not want him to go to jail, she should just have kept him in detention in his Tanay, Rizal, resthouse.