We all want a better Philippines where one third of our people do not have to go to bed hungry at night; where hungry little Filipino children do not have to dig into stinking garbage cans for scraps of rotting food — condemned to a life without a decent future.
So much of this mass human suffering is directly caused by endemic institutionalized corruption present in all branches of government.
Billions of pesos of taxes collected by government from the people should be returned to them in the form of various infrastructures like roads, bridges and railways; and services promoting health, education, peace and order, etc. Instead, hundreds of millions go to the pockets of corrupt officials and their co-conspirators.
Items such as milk which should feed hungry babies, books for poor students, medicines for indigent patients, housing for the homeless, remain undelivered because of corruption.
At the end of the administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA), the government was practically bankrupt. Money in the treasury was emptied due to rushed government expenditures allegedly transacted to fill already loaded pockets with more corruption money.
But eradicating or minimizing government corruption will not happen unless corrupt officials are successfully prosecuted in court. But what if court officials are themselves corrupt? Of all government officials, justices and judges are the least subject to scrutiny and prosecution. They are hardly subjected to lifestyle checks. As such unchecked corrupt justices and judges seriously hinder the campaign against corruption.
This is what Corona’s impeachment trial is all about. It is in line with the goal to clean government. Unseating the head of the Judicial Branch does much good, assuming he is guilty as charged. But that alone does not clean up the entire rotten court system. Other corrupt Justices and judges should also be removed and bold effective reforms instituted.
When a Corona-led Cabal of Arroyo Justices issued an ex parte TRO against the government’s travel ban on GMA without a hearing, the camel’s back broke. The House of Representatives subjected him to this impeachment trial with backing from Aquino. Nothing wrong with that. This is what most Filipinos want and he has their support. We are all tired of unpunished corruption.
In a trial, evidence comes in many forms including paper evidence, physical evidence, circumstantial evidence, witnesses’ statements or whatever.
The strategy of Corona’s defense team from the very start is obvious: keep any kind of evidence involving his financials or other matters touching on his moral character from being revealed. Cuevas has practically cited all the grounds for excluding evidence with his serial objections. One could play a betting game with others at the start of every hearing to see which one is closest to guessing how many times he would blurt out “Objection, your honor!”.
This is followed by claims of: “Immaterial”, “irrelevant”, “argumentative”, “misleading”, “hearsay”, etc.
While either he or the Presiding Judge has prevented a lot of serious evidence from being admitted which would have been very damaging to Corona, ironically, the prevention of critical evidence from being admitted is arguably equally damaging to Corona or maybe even more so in so far as the public perception is concerned.
Shielding the exact amounts of his dollar deposits in five accounts in just one bank suggests a lot about his culpability and begs the following question to be asked:
“The prosecution claims that one account alone contains 700 thousand dollars. If this is not true and if he is innocent and has nothing to hide, why therefore is he blanketing the amounts involved in his dollar accounts?
This is only the second impeachment trial in the Philippines. The first one involved the impeachment of former President Joseph Estrada which was not even completed.
It was truncated in the middle of the deliberations because a majority of eleven blatantly pro-Estrada loyalists voted not to open an envelope believed to contain damning important bank records. As a consequence, Senate President Aquilino Pimentel resigned followed by a walk out of the prosecutors. One declared: “It is clear to us that the judgement of the Impeachment Court will not be reached on truth that the people seek.”
The walkout triggered the EDSA 2 people power leading to the forced removal of Estrada.
Side note. Four of the eleven pro Estrada Senators are also involved in this Corona trial: Enrile, Defensor-Santiago, Sotto and Honasan.
Is this impeachment process Philippine style a good system to remove an erring high official?
For lack of original thinking, the Philippines simply adopted the American system. In theory, it looks okay. In practice, even in the U.S. where partisan politics can also sometimes play havoc on achieving worthy goals, it’s not always a good system. But in general, it works there because of firmly entrenched democratic institutions and more Senators are involved – 100 as compared to the present 23 in the Philippines. More thinking goes into the process.
Based on the country’s experience in the Estrada impeachment trial, this impeachment system as it currently stands does not work and will not accomplish its purpose in removing erring officials. It did not work in the Estrada trial which forced the people to go to the streets. It likely will not work now.
For it to have a decent chance to work, the Senator-Judges and the people must be constantly aware of the fundamental purpose for which the Impeachment Court exists. It exists primarily to determine whether or not an accused key official is morally fit to retain his or her position. The issue of technical competence is not an issue. Moral character is the main issue.
“Is the accuse Renato Corona morally fit to remain in office?”
With no disrespect intended to the Presiding Senator and the Senator-Judges, prior to the February 23, 2012 Thursday hearing, this impeachment trial had not been proceeding along lines consistent with the Impeachment Court’s reason for being. So much evidence relating to the accused’s moral character were being excluded.
The trial was being conducted like a criminal proceeding where the standard of proof in proving guilt appeared to be the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard – which is not the way an impeachment court should proceed.
Under these parameters, removing Corona as Chief Justice is about as probable as Manny Pacquiao becoming pope. The nation suffers heavy consequences if it is unable to remove a high ranking official even if it is obvious that he has engaged in wrongful conduct – if the reason is because the mechanism for removal is practically inutile.
It will be an unpalatably ugly situation if practically everyone knows the accused is guilty as hell but cannot be removed from office. Terribly bad for the country. Not only will our citizens seethe with anger and frustration, we lose credibility in the global community because of our screwed up justice system.
But after I watched last Thursday’s trial, there is some glimmer of hope that at least Presiding Judge-Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, a strong personality with a controversial sometime villain-sometime hero image who wields tremendous influence – now has a clearer understanding of which direction the Impeachment Court should go – in so far as standard of proof and admissibility of evidence is concerned.
It shows good faith on Enrile’s part in announcing that he had read a book on impeachment trials written by Charles Black, a highly respected genius and Yale professor on Constitutional Law. And as such, he now correctly concludes and announced for the first time – that the standard for proof in this impeachment trial should not be “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” but the lower standard of “clear and convincing evidence”.
Based on Enrile’s recent pronouncements and rulings re admissibility of evidence and standard of proof, it appears that his viewpoint regarding these issues has been dramaticallly influenced or altered by Black’s book. Every Senator-Judge acting in good faith and who wants to make an honest decision should read this book.
The Estrada impeachment experience and happenings in the current Corona trial indicate that certain Senator-Judges are incapable of taking the high road. Many of the Senators are admirable highly principled men and women – but because the impeachment system requires only eight Senators to vote against impeachment for Corona to walk – there is a strong possibility that he will.
Corruption darkens the intellect and some Senator-Judges will not be able to give an honest answer to this simple question which the ordinary well-meaning citizen can easily answer.
“Is the accuse Renato Corona morally fit to remain in office?”
They will avoid this question when they vote for acquittal like politician Pontius Pilate
asking: “What is truth?” – meaning: “There’s no such thing as truth.” Poor souls.
Note: Atty. Ted Laguatan is based in the San Francisco area. He is honored by the California State Bar as one of only 29 lawyers officially certified as Expert-Specialists in Immigration Law continuously for more than twenty years. He also does human rights and complex litigation cases involving accident injuries and wrongful death. Email laguatanlaw@gmail.com Tel
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