JUSTICE Secretary Leila de Lima yesterday sought an investigation of lawyers of former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo over reports that they were  harassing the doctors of the embattled former leader.

De Lima bsaid she was amenable to calls of militant lawmakers for the Supreme Court and Integrated Bar of the Philippines to investigate lawyers Jose Flaminiano, Raul Lambino and Ferdinand Topacio for the alleged “grand deception to hide the real condition of Arroyo.”

“The alleged harassment of their own doctors is of course a very serious matter that needs to be looked into,” she said.

De Lima explained that forcing doctors to produce false medical certificates – as the Arroyo lawyers allegedly did to her doctors – “smacks of grave coercion, if not obstruction of justice.”

“Their (doctors’) rights are being grossly violated,” she said.

Apart from the SC and IBP, the Justice secretary said the intervention of the Philippine Medical Association is required.

The DOJ chief believes that determining the true state of health of Mrs. Arroyo was crucial not only to the issue of her detention but also to the resolution of cases in the Supreme Court about the legality of her earlier order preventing the flight of the former president.        

De Lima meanwhile denied accusations that she pressured the judge handling the electoral sabotage case filed against former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo into denying the former leader's bid for house arrest.

She issued the statement in light of the insinuation of Arroyo’s corroborating lawyer Ferdinand Topacio that she sent Pasay City regional trial court Branch 112 Judge Jesus Mupas a letter supposedly warning him against granting Mrs. Arroyo's motion for house arrest.

“That’s not true at all. There’s no such letter,” she said.

Topacio said they were checking aninformation that De Lima committed a “highly improper” act that shows “the excutive bullying the judiciary.”

But De Lima believes the camp of Arroyo was already resorting to fiction just to hide the truth about the health condition of Mrs. Arroyo.

“It’s either they’re imagining things or deliberately foisting such a lie in order to discredit me,” she said.