Aquino’s insanity

Lowdown

Aquino’s insanity

By Jojo A. Robles

I cannot blame impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona for demanding that President Noynoy Aquino reveal the results of any psychological tests he may have undergone. If it is fair for Aquino to ask Corona to disclose all his assets to prove that he is blameless, then it must also be allowable to question the sanity of the President’s strange understanding of the principle of “innocent until proven guilty,” among other legal axioms.

People who understand how the law protects people wrongfully accused of crimes have long bewailed how Corona is being basically asked to prove that he is innocent, instead of his accusers being forced to prove that he is guilty. This is not rocket science: the law is supposed to take into account the possibility that someone may very well be accused of wrongdoing without any basis. And if Aquino will have his way, Corona must not be granted this basic right of a presumption of innocence and his accusers (including Aquino, their prime mover) do not have to shoulder the burden of proving that the chief magistrate is guilty.

Forget about Aquino’s strange gait, his monomania, his fixation on firearms, cars and women and all the other characteristics that some have taken to be signs that the President has Asperger’s Syndrome or some other more serious mental illness. His absurd pursuit of Corona, to the exclusion of every other national priority or concern, already borders on the insane—and deserves to be described that way.

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This is the mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma in the Senate: the senators, especially those who wish to discount the value of supposedly eminently verifiable facts, obsess about data and figures; and yet they fail to scrutinize obvious fabrications like anonymous small women and phantom document delivery people of unknown height and gender.

Miriam Defensor Santiago, bless her heart, knows exactly what the Senate impeachment court should focus on. And it’s not the clarity of the photocopying (and the possible forging) of bank documents obtained under suspicious circumstances or even which agency of government ordered their leaking, but why lawmakers are actively involved in the securing of these supposedly secret and secure papers in the first place.

Santiago, the only senator who has experience as a trial court judge before becoming a lawmaker, tried mightily to refocus the Senate’s attention to the fact that two congressmen intimately involved in the prosecution of impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona have been identified as the sources of the documents being used against the respondent. And yet, the Senate seems unwilling or unable, at this point, to grill either or both Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali and Quezon City Rep. Jorge Banal about how they really secured the documents being used to convict the chief justice.

Santiago pithily explained that, in the absence of an identifiable suspect in a crime such a pickpocketing, the person who possesses the goods stolen automatically becomes a suspect in the eyes of the police. In the case of stolen documents, “if you cannot explain to the police where you got the documents, then you stole the documents,” she said.

Santiago continued to assay her new-found role yesterday of benign interrogator, expressing her sympathies to a clearly rattled (“disturbed” was the term the senator used) Annabelle Tiongson, the manager of the PSBank branch where Corona supposedly stashed away ill-gotten wealth. But Santiago’s message was a clear and solid blow to the solar plexus of Umali, Banal and all the other House members in charge of prosecuting the chief justice.

But none of the other senators have been really calling either Umali or Banal to account for their possession of the documents they have presented to the court. And that anomaly is stretching the doctrine of inter-parliamentary courtesy too far.

The decision to convict or acquit Corona could hinge on the truth or falsity of the documents being presented as evidence against him. And the whole case, as it is now, could be judged on mythical persons or creatures, whose existence is only testified to by people of obvious bias without any other witnesses.

I hope Santiago doesn’t waver from her lonely quest. And that, in whatever manner she presents her questions, she will always cut to the quick and uncover the truth behind the blatant lies.