Recall the pardon... if Erap continue his challenge

Now it can be told that the President didn’t exactly did a comprehensive consultation on the pardon extended to Erap. Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales on Saturday believed that all members of the society concerned should have been well thought-out in the assessment to pardon former President Joseph Estrada and in the forfeiture order on his property. In a short dialogue over the Catholic Church-owned Radio Veritas 846, Rosales said, "When you dispense justice, you just don’t consider a solitary detached set of circumstances”. The Cardinal supposed the indictment of the dishonored president could have taught Filipinos a lesson in this clemency brouhaha.

When GMA proffered executive clemency to Estrada, the penitentiary punishment required on him by the Sandiganbayan was lay out-of-the-way. Sheriff Edgardo Urieta previously transmitted a notice directing Atty. Gerardo Banzon, chief of the Legal Advisory and Research Department at Banco de Oro, to release two checks in the name of the Sandiganbayan with a total amount of P215.8 million as total accounted amount of illegally acquired wealth deposited in the Erap’s Muslim Youth Foundation. At the moment Estrada showing disrespect to the president who had conferred clemency to him, had been issuing announcement left and right that he cannot obtain the justice that he wanted with this administration still in place. Continuing the diatribe he maintain that he is guiltless of the offense of plunder in which the court rightfully establish his guilt, articulating that he is challenging the administration of Gloria to recall the clemency. What a hard headed pathetic old man he is.

Seeing all this misdemeanor of Erap, Cardinal Vidal being the lead voice in the pardon request seems so disappointed in this on-going behavior of the former president. Last Friday, the good Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal begged the discredited president in a meeting to follow the conditionality of the pardon granted to him by Mrs. Arroyo and at least demonstrate a measure of gratefulness to the president.