Former Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, under arrest on charges of rigging the 2007 election, was moved by court order yesterday from a private hospital to a military facility where she will await a court decision on her case. Arroyo, president from 2001 to 2010 and now a member of Congress, has become the focal point of current President Benigno Aquino’s drive to uproot corruption. Under guard at a private hospital since her arrest last month, she was ordered transferred to a state hospital, rather than a regular detention centre, on health grounds. Arroyo underwent surgery twice this year for a spine condition. Television footage showed Arroyo, wearing a neck brace and white shawl, smiling while being wheeled out of the hospital to a waiting vehicle. Heavy rain scuttled a plan to take her by air to the military hospital. Arroyo, 64, told a television interviewer on Thursday that Aquino’s government was treating her unfairly. “The new administration has prejudged me. They are even using demagoguery to discredit me totally,” Arroyo, an economist and daughter of a former Philippine president, told GMA TV. “Of course, if they can destroy me, he will look good,” she said, referring to Aquino. Arroyo’s lawyers have petitioned the high court to quash the arrest warrant and the electoral sabotage charges. Aquino has made the fight against graft the cornerstone of his mandate and has in the past week accused the chief justice of hindering his drive and of bias in favour of his predecessor. Arroyo would occupy the same presidential suite at the military hospital used by ousted President Joseph Estrada for 3-1/2 years while in detention for plunder charges. She assumed power after a populist revolt removed Estrada in 2001. Sentenced to life imprisonment six years later, Estrada was pardoned by Arroyo two weeks after the verdict. Arroyo had sought permission from the government and courts to travel overseas for treatment, but the government, fearing she would evade prosecution, issued an order stopping her at Manila airport. She also faces inquiries for public fund misuse. Reuters