MANILA, Philippines -- For the lead prosecutor who spent almost six years building a case against deposed President Joseph Estrada, the recent pardon granted to the convicted plunderer was apparently too much for his mind and body to bear.

“I’m having bouts of insomnia again,” former Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo confided, when asked Tuesday how he was taking the executive clemency extended by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to Estrada just six weeks after his conviction.

“You know, that mix of anger, depression, frustration,” Marcelo, who quit the post in September 2006 reportedly for health reasons and has since returned to private law practice, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net) in a phone interview from his office in Makati City.

“You worked so hard for so long (to win a conviction) and when you did win you had that feeling of relief and thought that the system worked,” he said.

“But then after one and half months you find the administration of the judicial system being undermined and short-circuited,” Marcelo said.

“Why so soon?” he wondered aloud in Filipino.

On Monday, Marcelo and 20 other private lawyers who assisted the public prosecutors in the Estrada plunder trial for free issued a joint statement vehemently opposing the pardon.

“Is this a conspiracy between the two Presidents against the interest of the Filipino people, a negation of what would have otherwise been a resounding victory in the Filipinos’ fight against graft and corruption?” the lawyers asked.

Marcelo clarified Tuesday that he and the lawyers were merely airing their suspicion that a deal had been sealed between Ms Arroyo and Estrada.

Signs of a deal

But when asked what he thought would be the “signs” that such a deal had been reached, Marcelo remarked:

“When you start seeing the opposition dividing, when the impeachment complaint (against the President) fails to gain support from those identified with Estrada, that’s when you can have a basis to insinuate (that there was a conspiracy).

As a member of the prosecution panel, Marcelo first became Estrada’s courtroom tormentor in December 2001 in his aborted impeachment trial.

Shortly after Estrada’s ouster, President Arroyo appointed Marcelo solicitor general in February 2001 and then Ombudsman in October 2002, succeeding the retiring Aniano Desierto. By then Estrada’s plunder trial had been under way in the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court.

Mock funeral procession

Civil society members, garbed in black and carrying a cardboard coffin, marched down Ayala Avenue in Makati City’s central business district Tuesday to pronounce justice dead with Estrada’s pardon.

“I would have been somewhat happy if he at least spent one day in prison,” said Lauro Vizconde of the Volunteers against Crime and Corruption during the mock funeral procession.

Vizconde, whose family was killed in a gruesome massacre in 1991, was joined by about 30 other demonstrators, including lawyer Leonard de Vera of the No Pardon for Erap Movement.

“The worse part is his attitude. He has shown no remorse at all and has insisted on his innocence,” De Vera said.

The group assembled near the Makati Central Fire Station on Gil Puyat Avenue and began their march at past 10 a.m., carrying Philippine flags, placards and streamers denouncing the Estrada pardon.

Some of the placards read: “Jaywalking penalty: fine and jail. Plunder penalty: pardon. Wow, only in the Philippines,” “Justice died on Oct. 26,” “Free all 70-year-olds like Erap,” and “No act of contrition from Erap: Why grant pardon?”

Diminished stature

Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez Tuesday said the pardon to Estrada “would certainly lessen his stature as the leader of the opposition.”

“He had always been declaring that he was innocent. I would have preferred that he continued as an uncompromised, de facto leader of the opposition,” said Rodriguez, spokesperson of Estrada’s Puwersa ng Masang Pilipino.

Anakpawis party-list Rep. Crispin Beltran said Estrada “should take a more defined stand and prove that he has not capitulated to the administration.”

“It could well be that he is still hoping to regain control over all the assets, stocks, shares and even mansions that were sequestered by the government when he was arrested and charged with plunder,” Beltran said. With reports from DJ Yap and Christian V. Esguerra