Corona strikes back!

Nestor Mata

'Chief Justice Corona finally breaks his silence and answers all the “insults and baseless lies” hurled against him and his family by the President and his prosecutors.’

CHIEF Justice Renato Corona, who was meek and quiet all throughout the 26 days of his trial before the Senate impeachment court, finally broke his silence soon after President Aquino’s band of prosecutors rested their case last week.

Corona’s counterattacks caught them by surprise, along with their propaganda corps that pilloried him in an out-of-court trial by publicity, when he launched his own media blitz answering all the accusations they hurled at him long before and during the ongoing trial.

In a series of TV-radio interviews, Corona answered one by one all those allegations aired by them in press conferences and in media, especially "all the insults and baseless lies" hurled against him and his family by the President, his band of prosecutors and corps of propagandists.

He described as nothing but "black propaganda" that portrayed him as allegedly a crooked public official who used his position to enrich himself and his family. "I’ll give an adequate explanation for every centavo that came in and out," he vowed, obviously referring to what he and his defense panel would do when their turn begins this week.

"Those out to destroy me had been spreading those stories… and that’s what I wanted to explain since the beginning," Corona told television viewers and radio listeners. "They are trying to picture me as if I had nothing when I entered the government. That’s not true!…I was a top executive in the private sector for half of my entire career. So, I was able to save. And just like my wife I also didn’t come from an ordinary family."

Corona admitted he and his wife and children were hurt by those slanderous attacks. "We’re just humans, we have endured all kinds of insults and name calling," he said. "Who wouldn’t be hurt by all those baseless accusations and lies?" And then he revealed that "a professional group" was responsible for the "demolition job" against him.

Actually, the impeached jurist wanted to speak to defend himself and his family since Day One of his trial, but he refrained from doing so after his defense lawyers told him to wait until Aquino’s prosecutors rested their case. And when they did last week, he appeared at a morning show of the television network GMA-7 and its radio programs, and later in other rival networks ABC-5 and ABS-CBN, where he answered all the personal attacks against him, but avoided discussing the merits of the case before the Senate court.

Corona was quickly criticized for launching his own counter-media blitz, but he defended himself, noting that they had resorted to a "trial by publicity" what they couldn’t get in the Senate impeachment court. "Do they want the people to hear only their side? That cannot be!" He didn’t have to say that he was exercising his right to free expression in defending himself from the diatribes of those who conducted their own unbridled media blitz demonizing him, mercilessly and ceaselessly, for weeks.

Then, like a lightning from the blue sky, Corona disclosed what may well be described as President Aquino’s "flexing the political muscles of his incumbency" to satisfy his desire to get whatever he wanted done by government officials, and in this case the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who heads the Judiciary, a co-equal branch of government.

For the very first time, Corona revealed that he was invited to a personal meeting with the President who asked him about his issuance of an Executive Order for the creation of a Truth Commission "para habulin ang taong ito." (Aquino meant former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.) "Mr. President," Corona said he told him, "kung may ebidencia, ituluy natin, pero kailangan susunod tayo sa Saligang Batas at sa requirements ng mga batas" (if there is evidence, we can do it, but we have to abide by the Constitution and the requirements of the laws).

Unfortunately, Corona recalled, Aquino and his legal team went ahead, issued Executive No. 1, and insisted on singling out Arroyo. And, soon after the Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional, Aquino and his political henchmen and propagandists in the Palace and yellow-colored media, went on a campaign to disparage him for "protecting" Arroyo. (The chief jurist also came out with other revelations that personally affected him, but may be relevant to the on-going trial before the Senate impeachment court, and will be reported in our Thursday column.)

During all the those days when Aquino’s prosecutors were trying to prove their case against Corona, submitting to the court documents, mostly purloined and forged, outside the courtroom their propagandists were making it appear that their case against Corona was "airtight" and even calling for his resignation and insinuating that he was afraid to testify for fear he would be humiliated.

Well, now we see the spectacle of Corona giving them a dose of their own medicine.

Corona’s interviews, according to TV watchers and radio listeners, showed that he was amiable and soft-spoken while explaining his side. "He talked with dignity," in the words of one, "so unlike the prosecutors, and their fellow congressmen-spokespersons, who all projected themselves like braggarts and were caught lying when they claimed to have submitted a ‘preponderance of evidence’ to prove their charges against him."

Indeed, in the view of other perceptive watchers of the trial, Aquino’s prosecutors, despite the number of witnesses they called and the documents they presented, have failed to prove their case, and that’s precisely what Corona’s battery of defense lawyers intend to do in the coming days and weeks of his trial before the Senate impeachment court.

***

Thought of the Day: "A person with a sound mind always thinks before he talks and acts, unlike a fool who always advertizes his stupidity and ignorance!" – From the Proverbs in the Bible.