Trial and horror

Talk of the business town these days concerns the Senate—the forthcoming circus there. It is, as bean counters are wont to do, turning into a numbers game. For wagers they try to figure out how many senators are expected to side with which camp in the forthcoming trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona.

One analysis that I heard put the number of “undecided” to only 10 out of the 24 sitting senators. It is said that the others must be aligned with either the Corona camp or the Aquino (Part II) administration.

If such is the trend of thinking among pencil pushers in business, the same thought must have occurred to those in both sides of the trial. Just think what both sides are prepared to do to win over those “undecided” senators.

What kind of horse trading, to be done by both sides, powerful as both of them are in their own ways, can the guys here in my barangay expect from the biggies in the government this time?

The horror therefore in this exercise in democracy—the historic impeachment of the chief magistrate of the land—will cost us big.

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I find the recent public statement of former Senator Rene Saguisag worth repeating here. He said Corona has already lost half the battle with his impeachment by the House of Representatives, and whichever way the trial turns out, the trial itself would have already destroyed his reputation and impair his credibility. Win or lose, in other words, Corona loses.

Aside from being a former senator and lawyer of former President Estrada, who was the only nationally elected official ever removed from office in this country, Saguisag also happens to be a principal author of RA 6713, known as the Code of Ethics for public officials, which requires among others all those in the government to file their statements of assets, liabilities and networth, or the SALN.

About four years ago, Saguisag went ballistic over the ruling of the Supreme Court that, in effect, prevented us from taking a look into the SALN of the members of the judiciary.

And how did the Supreme Court justify such a stance? Well the ruling said it would protect the “independence” of the judiciary.

Here are Saguisag’s exact words, as taken from a report by the PCIJ [Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism]: “Why have the justices issued a self-serving ruling?”

He went on: “The third branch of government is so powerful that they can even remove a president, why should they be different?”

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In business, they are interested in how the trial will play out the money angle in the articles of impeachment, the SALN of Corona in particular. Money is the juiciest angle in this event. Media is sure to lap it all up.

Just last week we saw on the front page a huge photograph of 300 square-meter penthouse, supposedly in a luxury condo in the posh Global City. Reports said the House prosecution panel had documents showing that the penthouse belonged to Corona, bought in 2009, or when he was already an associate justice, estimated to cost P14.5 million.

That was a steal for whoever paid for the property. The going rate for simple condo units in Makati is about P100,000 per square meter. That penthouse should cost at least P30 million.

To defend his boss, the spokesperson of the Supreme Court, a lawyer named Midas Marquez, said something about Corona being a man of means even before he became a government official in 1992, which of course his SALN should be able to prove during the trial.

For his part, Corona said that up to today he was still paying a monthly amortization for the penthouse.

Still, the question that his camp must answer during the trial is this: Where does he get the money for such a prohibitive monthly amortization?

From what I gathered, the penthouse is not the only bomb that the House prosecution panel is prepared to detonate during the trial. There are other pricey properties supposedly owned by Corona and his wife, plus some investments here and there.

Win or lose, as Saguisag indicated, Corona loses.

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Make no mistake that the public has already been drawn to this once in a lifetime spectacle in the Senate.

For instance, public comments on the news on some mysteries in Corona’s doctorate degree showed that people were already connecting every bit of news on Corona to the impeachment.

A report by Marites Vitug, published by the Inquirer, indicated that the university where Corona went for his doctorate degree apparently exempted him from some tedious tasks like preparing for a dissertation, or finishing the entire degree in five years, since Corona took all of 10 years to complete it.

By the way, Vitug reported that the university did not respond to her queries regarding the issue on Corona’s seemingly missing dissertation. In answering her report, the university said they did not answer to queries for reporting only in “online media.” (Vitug filed the report in a website called www.rappler.com.)

Do I take it that if the university would not bother with queries from “online” journalists such as Vitug, who even wrote a number of well-researched books on the judiciary and the Supreme Court, the ordinary guys down here in my barangay would have no chance in hell to get the information, even if it concerned a person as vital to the cause of public interest as the Chief Justice?

Good grief, Vitug was only asking for a copy of the dissertation of an important public official, if it really did exist. Just as a citizen she should have deserved the decency of an official reply, particularly from an institution that claims to teach our youth such important aspects of life as morality and religion.