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Estrada Free To Leave Country As MILF Attacks
WASHINGTON & MANILA, Jan 25 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) attacked military bases in southern Philippines, ousted leader Joseph Estrada, facing possible corruption charges, was free to leave the country, but the government would not force him into exile, Justice Secretary Hernani Perez said Wednesday.
"If former president Estrada wants to leave, that is his decision. We cannot force him to leave," Perez told a news conference in response to a query as to whether Manila would banish the ex-leader on fears his supporters could cause violence.
Perez said Estrada "has not indicated" that he planned to go abroad and quoted him as reportedly saying, "I was born here, I live here and I will die here."
"Those were his words, we cannot send him in exile," Perez said.
President Gloria Arroyo replaced Estrada, 63, after a military-backed popular uprising forced him out of office on January 20th.
Government prosecutors this week launched criminal proceedings against Estrada on a host of graft charges, including economic plunder, which carries the death penalty.
Tax authorities have ordered his bank account frozen while immigration officials placed him, his family and alleged cronies under a "hold departure order" list.
Perez said Estrada's lawyer, Estelito Mendoza, had questioned the authority of the justice department to bar the former president from leaving.
"If he wants to question it in court, then he is free do so, but I will not change my decision that the DOJ [justice department] has the power to issue the HDO [hold departure order]," Perez later told reporters.
The Foreign Office, meanwhile, disclosed that ordinary passports issued to Estrada and his wife expired in 1999. It said that the former first couple used diplomatic passports during their official trips abroad, which are automatically "revalidated".
"Both of them are not in possession [now] of any valid passport whether regular, diplomatic or official," Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Franklin Ebdalin said.
Estrada, being a former president, could be given a new diplomatic passport, although there have been no instructions yet to that effect from the presidential palace.
Earlier Thursday, the country's number three official, Senate president Aquilino Pimentel, urged Arroyo to banish the disgraced Estrada abroad to avoid possible bloodshed.
"If former president Estrada remains in the country his followers could seek his blessing" to create trouble for Arroyo, a scenario that "could lead to violence," Pimentel warned.
"He may want to die here, but many other people could get hurt."
At least two Arroyo allies in the Senate supported his suggestion, but civic groups and prosecutors reminded the government that the majority of Filipinos wanted Estrada tried and prosecuted.
House of Representatives member Wigberto Tanada said sending Estrada into exile "may create some legal problems" because that would mean trying him in his absence.
"Let the cases be prosecuted and tried and let justice take its course," Tanada, one of the 11 House prosecutors in Estrada's aborted impeachment trial, said.
"History must not be allowed to repeat itself. The lesson must be learned that no one, be he the highest official of the land, is above the law."
He was apparently referring to the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was ousted in 1986 by a similar revolt but allowed to flee to Hawaii, where he died three years later.
The Marcoses were subsequently allowed to return home, but in 15 years of litigation Manila has not recovered a single centavo from millions in dollars they were believed to have looted.
Estrada was impeached by Congress in November and subsequently put on trial at the Senate. The trial abruptly ended last week when senators voted to exclude evidence linking Estrada to secret bank accounts, triggering the bloodless revolt.
Meanwhile, in Cotabato, Muslim separatists attacked a government project guarded by the army in the southern Philippines, leaving four attackers dead and nine other people wounded, a military spokesman said Thursday.
A group of MILF separatists fired rocket-propelled grenades and high-powered rifles at the compound of a private contractor to an irrigation project there, as well as at an army battalion securing the site late Wednesday, Major Julieto Ando told reporters.
The MILF retreated as the army retaliated with mortar fire, leaving four attackers dead, he said.
Ando said a soldier and eight other people, mostly civilian workers for the construction firm, were wounded in the 15-minute firefight near the town of Ampatuan on Mindanao island.
Also, a group of unidentified gunmen opened fire on a navy ship docked on the Polloc wharf in Mindanao, the military said.
The ship returned fire on the attackers, who were traveling at high speed aboard a small boat, a military statement said.
The MILF, the country's main Muslim separatist group, has waged a 23-year rebellion for the establishment of an independent Islamic state in the country's south.
The 13,000-strong group has recently stepped up its attacks on military installations in the region after its leaders were charged with murder in connection with a wave of bomb attacks that killed 22 people in Manila on December 30th.
New President Arroyo early this week ordered an immediate resumption of stalled peace talks with the MILF.
Negotiations collapsed last year when then-president Estrada, in his "all-out war" policy, launched a major offensive that led the fall of the MILF's main headquarters.
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