Accused Philippine Lawmakers Find Refuge in Their Workplace

For nearly three weeks, five members of Congress have taken sanctuary in their office building. By day, they attend official meetings. At night, they sleep in the same room and worry that they could be arrested at any time.

The left-wing members of the House of Representatives are vocal critics of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who ordered their arrest last month for allegedly participating in a plot to force her from office. They have called on her to resign but deny trying to oust her.

Granted temporary immunity in the congressional office compound, they spend each night in a large conference room next door to the office of the speaker of the House. Security guards stand watch outside their door to protect them from a possible predawn police raid.

Rep. Liza Maza, the only woman in the group, gets the couch. The others sleep on mattresses on the floor. Late at night and early in the morning, they pad through the corridors of Congress wearing their sleeping attire and carrying their pillows. They wash their clothes in a bathroom sink and hang them at night outside their offices.

“It’s a crazy thing,” said Rep. Joel Virador, one of the five, as he got ready for bed Tuesday night. “But they have the guns. We are not taking the risk.”

The standoff between Arroyo and the left-wing caucus began with the president’s declaration of a state of emergency Feb. 24. Officials said she was the target of a coup plot in which she and other top political figures were to be assassinated.

The five legislators -- and a sixth who was arrested before he could reach the safety of the building -- are at the heart of her contention that the alleged plot was a conspiracy between left-wing rebels and military officers.

Arroyo lifted the state of emergency after a week, saying the threat had subsided, but the government maintains that it can still arrest suspected plotters without a warrant. Some military officers have been relieved of their posts and confined to quarters, but only one person is behind bars for involvement in the alleged plot. He is Rep. Crispin Beltran, 73, who has diabetes and has suffered a minor stroke.

Beltran was arrested Feb. 25 on a 21-year-old warrant for sedition dating back to when Ferdinand Marcos was president. He is now charged with rebellion against Arroyo, a capital offense.

The other five learned of Beltran’s arrest while they were at a hotel holding a news conference to criticize Arroyo’s declaration of an emergency. As police moved in, Rep. Satur Ocampo, their leader, escaped out a side door. Officers stopped his official vehicle and arrested two aides, but Ocampo, 67, jumped into a backup car and escaped.

Soon after, the other four members of Congress slipped out the back of the hotel. Two days later, all five made their way to the legislative building, known as the Batasan, where the House voted unanimously to give them protection until the congressional session ends or warrants are issued for their arrest.

Police say that if the Batasan Five, as they have become known, step outside the compound, they will be arrested.

With Congress insisting that legal procedures be followed, police have struggled to come up with sufficient evidence to obtain arrest warrants from a judge. Nevertheless, Arroyo pronounced all six guilty in an interview Saturday with the Philippine Star newspaper

“They have committed a crime,” the president said. “They are committing a continuing crime. And we have laws to deal with that. In fact, they are disrupting the work of Congress with what they are doing.”

Arroyo said arrest warrants were unnecessary but that as a concession to Congress, her administration had agreed not to arrest the five without them.

“The secretary of justice has agreed that he will go to the trouble of getting a warrant,” she said. “But they really have to face the full force of the law.”

Arroyo has maintained a tenuous hold on the presidency since her staff last year accidentally released a tape recording of her directing a top election official to make sure she won the 2004 presidential race by a million votes. She survived impeachment attempts in Congress, where her supporters control most of the votes, and she has rejected calls to resign.

The accused lawmakers deny they were plotting to overthrow Arroyo and say she is trying to silence them because they are among her most vocal critics.

The six make up the House’s entire left-wing caucus. Ocampo, a journalist, was once a top official of the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines. He spent 12 years in prison without being convicted of a crime, escaped on one occasion, and spent another 10 years in on-and-off hiding with rebel forces in the mountains.

“I have escaped from better presidents than her,” he said after evading arrest two weeks ago.

Ocampo says the president is attempting to destroy the caucus’ growing Bayan Muna (People First) movement, which won three seats in 2001, six in 2004 and could make even greater gains in elections scheduled for next year if the six legislators are free to campaign.

In one of the more questionable assertions against the six lawmakers, authorities presented an affidavit from a manicurist who claims to have seen all of them meeting with a renegade military officer at a farmhouse three hours from Manila on the afternoon of Feb. 20, the day before the officer was arrested for allegedly plotting the coup.

The manicurist says he happened to be near the farmhouse looking for someone who owed him money when the lawmakers pulled up in a vehicle and got out holding documents.

Congressional records show that all six were in Congress at the time and that two of them gave speeches on the floor of the House that afternoon.

The Batasan Five’s congressional immunity could expire April 7 when the House goes into recess. The five figure it’s only a matter of time before they are in jail or on the run.

On Tuesday, they looked tired and said they felt emotionally drained.

“We are not under arrest, but we feel like we are,” said Teddy Casino, 37. It’s hard, he said, to explain to his 3-year-old son why he can’t come home.

The only one who has left the compound is Maza, who traveled in a 30-car convoy with other lawmakers to attend a Senate hearing across town.

Police warned they would arrest any of the five who tried to leave again.

But Casino says there is one bright side to living in the congressional complex.

“At least I’m never late,” he said.