By his own admission, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile—as the presiding officer of the impeachment court that ruled to remove former Chief Justice Renato Corona from his powerful position—gave the defense a lot of leeway in the proceedings.
JPE perhaps had a good reason for doing so. It seemed he was aware that, from the beginning of the trial, the defense has been hammering on the supposed “grave abuse of discretion” by the court. The defense has been using all the tricks in the law book to shoot down all the “methods” in the trial, trying to take focus away from the “substance” of it all. You know—the facts!
Thus, JPE even had to bend backwards for the Corona camp. Nowhere in the world could the witness, even if he was the chief justice of the republic, be allowed to narrate his testimony, departing from the strict question-and-answer format of a trial. JPE gave Corona more than three hours to tell his emotional story—all by his lonesome self. In other words, as the presiding officer, JPE tried to give the trial an unmistakable quality of fairness, even to the point of stretching the rules in favor of Corona.
Still JPE rendered a “guilty” judgment on Corona. In subsequent media interviews, JPE explained his reasons, among them being the notorious “walkout” after the lengthy monologue, the inconsistencies in Corona’s statements, and the bomb dropped by Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales on Corona’s much talked about dollar accounts.
To the guys down here in my barangay, those factors indeed contributed to the worsening public perception of Corona. It would be foolish to believe that the senators—all those 20 who voted against Corona—did not consider public perception in their decisions. Our senators at all times must have thought of public opinion. This, after all, was their main job description. They represented the people.
Truly, the extensive media coverage of the trial helped in shaping public opinion against Corona. Even the former chief justice deplored the so-called media campaign apparently launched by the Aquino (Part II) administration against him. Corona believed that media was a crucial factor in the outcome of the trial.
It was a historic trial, however, and it was big news. With or without the supposed media campaign waged by the administration, media simply had the duty to report on all aspects of the event—in and out of the court, including rallies, surveys, sidelines in the hearing, rumors and what have you. Yes, even including the supposedly “fake” documents showing Corona’s dollar accounts that circulated, mysteriously, at the last minute of the trial.
Media did not invent those hidden dollar accounts, the luxury condos, and even the property in the United States. Media certainly could not ignore the stories regarding the family corporation BGEI and the plight of the Basas, featuring the 90-year-old nun Flory. They were all newsworthy items—the stuff “scoops” were made of in both electronic and print media.
Outside the court, there were cases filed against Corona by the group called Akbayan, particularly the cases filed by its spokesperson Risa Hontiveros and party-list Representative Walden Bello before the Ombudsman. Hontiveros asked the Ombudsman to investigate the assets of Corona that were revealed in the course of the trial, and Bello even asked for “forfeiture.” They are pending cases up to now, and they started the string of events that eventually resulted in the Corona camp’s move to call Ombudsman Morales to the witness stand—even as a hostile witness.
By the way, JPE revealed that the testimony of Morales helped—in a big way—to sway certain senators to decide against Corona. JPE even admitted that he tried to help the defense in establishing Morales as a hostile witness. Thus the defense had to refute the testimony of Morales. Otherwise, her testimony would be clear points against Corona—in particular, her testimony on his various dollar accounts. Morales brought with her some documents, and the senators found them believable.
To quote JPE, “No mind, even Einstein, can invent the details covered by those transactions.”
Still, the big and still unsolved mystery was the move of the defense to call Morales to the witness stand. Word now goes around that it was the call of Corona himself against the advice of the defense team. It seemed that, at the latter part of the trial, some documents on his alleged dollar accounts started to circulate. They were supposedly manufactured documents—as in “fake.” And it is still hard to say up to now which camp floated those fake documents, whether the defense or the prosecution.
It was possible, nonetheless, somebody in the Corona camp thought that Morales actually possessed those fake documents. There should be a way to show the trickery of the prosecution in the trial—dramatically. Why not expose the sham through the testimony of the Ombudsman! What impact on the senators!
According to JPE, the exact opposite happened, and the testimony of Morales weighed heavily in the decision of the senators, particularly the 17-page report from the Anti-Money Laundering Council, or the AMLC.
JPE used the term “unjust enrichment” in subsequent media interviews, apparently to summarize the case against Corona. In this regard, he pointed at the BGEI case in which the Coronas obtained control of a corporation with more than P30 million in assets at a give-away bargain price of P28,000. Actually, the defense used the BGEI to explain the hidden bank accounts in the name of Corona. It was the defense that brought the BGEI case to the trial. The Manila city government bought a BGEI property for P35 million, and yet through some maneuvering the Coronas took control of BGEI through an auction for only P28,000. In JPE’s words, “if there was any unjust enrichment done, then that would be it.”
JPE could not believe that Corona had nothing to do with the maneuvering for the control of BGEI. Nor was it plausible for JPE, and perhaps the other senators, that Corona in the 1960s and the 1970s accumulated millions of dollars by “investing” in foreign exchange—not even dealing or trading in dollars, which could only have been done through the black market at that time because it was simply prohibited for any individual to own dollars at that time.
And just like the other cases against Corona before the Ombudsman, the BGEI and the dollar accounts are still bound to haunt him. The heirs of an original stockholder of BGEI, Jose Basa III, are pursuing their claims on BGEI. The Ombudsman may still question those existing dollar accounts. The end of this whole affair is nowhere near.