News Article

Leftist solon gets green light to leave RP

REPRESENTATIVE Satur Ocampo finally got the green light to board his flight to Frankfurt Friday night after the Department of Justice (DoJ) allowed him to leave the country.

"The Arroyo government tried but failed to stop me from going to Geneva,” said Ocampo, who has been accused of plotting a coup against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Airport immigration officials initially prevented Ocampo, a former communist guerrilla leader-turned politician, from boarding a flight to Frankfurt, where he planned to catch a flight to Geneva.

“They know fully well that I would not be there for leisure but to expose the political assassinations, the trumped-up rebellion complaints and the political persecution being unleashed by Mrs. Arroyo against the Left and its other opponents," he said.

Ocampo, 68, said he would visit the United Nations Human Rights Commission office to check on the status of his Bayan Muna (People First) party's complaint against alleged human rights violations by the Arroyo government.

He said Arroyo was just scared she would be exposed to the world as a “petty tyrant who has unleashed a dirty war against civilians and non-combatants whose crime is to demand her resignation or ouster from office.”

Justice department officials earlier said Ocampo was on a list of people banned from leaving the country due to pending criminal cases involving them.

State prosecutors in February filed charges of rebellion and attempting a coup against Ocampo and 15 other people including five fellow legislators belonging to fringe leftist political parties.

They accused them of taking part in a plot to topple Arroyo, who imposed a crackdown on the political opposition in February after foiling what she described as a coup attempt by right-wing military rebels and communist guerrillas.

However a lower court judge threw out the charges on a technicality, without ruling on the merits of the case. The government has vowed to press ahead with the charges.

The Left accuses the military of being behind the murders of more than 200 leftist activists, many of them from Ocampo's party, since 2001, a charge the government denies. With Agence France-Presse

( Published from the PDI, June 23, 2006)