Senator scores pattern of hospital arrests

MANILA, Philippines — Coincidence or premeditated?

This was Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s query yesterday, as recent high-profile personalities arrested for non-bailable cases sought hospital arrest due to alleged health concerns.

Speaking on radio dzMM, Lacson mentioned Sen. Rodante Marcoleta, 72, and former public works secretary Manuel Bonoan, 80, who both face plunder raps before the Sandiganbayan but are confined at the Philippine National Police General Hospital (PNP-GH).

“It’s as if their ailments all came out alongside the warrant of arrest,” Lacson noted.

Marcoleta is charged with plunder for accepting an undeclared P75 million in campaign donations from friends for his 2025 senatorial bid. 

The senator was rushed to the hospital after his arrest due to chest pains. He was diagnosed with mild pneumonia, degenerative disc disease and hypertension. The court has yet to issue his commitment order on where he will be detained.

Bonoan is charged with plunder over his alleged role in tinkering with the national budget to fund anomalous flood control projects for kickbacks.

The court allowed him hospital arrest due to his illnesses such as Stage 4 chronic renal disease, hypertension, diabetes, gouty arthritis, spondylolisthesis, dyslipidemia, prostate cancer, severe coronary artery disease and left atrial and ventricular enlargement.

Bonoan has turned state witness to testify against detained senators Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr.

“When a warrant of arrest is out and the person has high standing in society, they suddenly become ill, and all the medical complications come out. There’s pneumonia, high blood pressure, high cholesterol – everything hurts. Suddenly there’s a neck brace, and then their back hurts,” Lacson said.

The senator’s neck brace remark was a jab at former president and now Pampanga lawmaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who, when charged with plunder and before her acquittal, was allowed hospital arrest and diagnosed with several ailments, like a degenerative bone disease.

Lacson had also expressed his stance on X, tweeting on Wednesday: “WARNING: Bawal magkasakit. Mahal ang gamot. Bawal magka-‘warrant’. Baka magkasakit.” (WARNING: Being sick is prohibited. Medicine is expensive. Having a warrant of arrest is not allowed. You might get sick.)

Lacson, a former national police chief, said he would ask the PNP and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) during the agency’s budget hearing about the hospital detention of plunder suspects and if this takes away a ward from a police officer.

“One issue is that the PNP-GH has its own budget, funded by taxpayers. Those authorized to be confined there are PNP members or their dependents. But who shoulders the costs for the stay and medication of Bonoan and Marcoleta? As far as I know, neither of them are PNP dependents,” he said.

Lacson said the late senate president Juan Ponce Enrile had also been confined at the PNP-GH when he faced plunder charges over the pork barrel scam.

But at least Enrile had served as defense secretary, and the PNP was once part of the defense establishment when it was still the Philippine Constabulary, Lacson said.