MANILA, Philippines — Former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo deserves to be treated with civility and dignity, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said Friday. Enrile was reacting to the demand of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) that Mrs. Arroyo, if found physically fit by doctors, should be transferred from the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City to an ordinary jail.

“We should respect the former President, whatever you may say about her or him. We must treat her with a certain degree of civility and dignity,” Enrile said.

“If she is going to be convicted, then punish her. But before that, given the fact that she has handled the country for nine years, we have given the fact that she has handled the country for nine years, we have to be very careful,” he said.

The Comelec wanted to erase impressions that it is giving the Mrs. Arroyo the VIP treatment.

The Comelec had charged the former President, now a Pampanga congresswoman, with the unbailable crime of electoral sabotage.

After staying for weeks at the St. Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig City for neck and back pains, Mrs. Arroyo was transferred in December to Veterans on orders of the Pasay City Regional Trial Court.

But Enrile cautioned the government that it should not been seen as “too oppressive or too rigid” in handling the case of the former President.

On claims that the former President was being given the VIP treatment, Enrile pointed out that in Philippine jails, there are “differentiated treatment” for detainees or prisoners.

He cited the case of former President Joseph Estrada who, after the EDSA Dos demonstration in 2001, was brought to Camp Crame and had to do with a single room.

Estrada was transferred to the Sto. Domingo house in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, and then to the Veterans, then to a military stockade in Tanay, Rizal. Estrada was eventually allowed to stay in his summer house which is adjacent to the Tanay military stockade.

He also cited his own experience as a detainee when he was thrown into a one-room detention cell.

Enrile had been linked to the 1989 coup against the late President Corazon C. Aquino and was arrested while he was at the Senate in February, 1990.