In due time?

BY DUCKY PAREDES

MALAYA

‘We need a Court that can rise above their friendships and clients, rise above their biases and make sacrifices for the blind Lady Justice and the Country.’

HOW much has chicanery must be uncovered about a sitting Chief Justice before he is proven to be unfit for his lofty perch? Why doesn’t impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona want to open his dollar accounts? What is he hiding? He keeps saying that – in due time – he will reveal anything,

When will that be? When he retires in 2017?

On his deathbed? Pagputi ng uwak?

Is he afraid that disclosure of his hoard of dollars would open a can of worms, that his claimed four decades of “hard and honest toil” where he says he accumulated a lot of savings would turn out to be the proceeds of quite possibly under-the-table deals?

Corona may have won a reprieve with Monday’s vote by the Senate to honor the SC’s TRO on his dollar accounts, but whatever euphoria that might have given him is certainly temporary and may be very short-lived.

Even the senator-judges. who voted not to pick a fight with the SC, by honoring the Court’s TRO explain that they will go to the SC to argue for the lifting of the TRO, if only to avoid a constitutional crisis. Of course, every senator (except for, maybe, one) stoutly opposes any TRO that would stop the impeachment trial itself. If the Supreme Court issues such a TRO, then the SC would have created the full-blown constitutional crisis, not the Senator-Judges!

Even just the fact that we are entertaining the possibility of a serious constitutional crisis arising from the judiciary curtailing the power of the Senate sitting as an impeachment court to do its work already tells us that there must be changes in the present SC. We need a Court that can rise above their friendships and clients, rise above their biases and make sacrifices for the blind Lady Justice and the Country. I want to say that “If Corona has nothing to hide, why does he not voluntarily open his dollar accounts to public scrutiny”; but, heck, of course he has everything to hide.

Clearly, whatever monies he was putting away while in the government service belong to a forbidden hoard of less-than-legal earnings. If it were not, there would be no reason for him to withhold these amounts in reporting his Statements of Assets Liabilities and Net Worth.(SALN)

Opening Corona’s dollar accounts to public scrutiny is relevant and material to Article 2 of the impeachment complaint that says Corona failed to file accurate and timely statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs). The first two weeks of the impeachment trial have unearthed the fact that Corona has misdeclared and undervalued his real estate properties and bank accounts in his SALNs in the millions of pesos.

His team of topnotch lawyers suggests that these “inaccuracies” in Corona’s SALN can be “corrected” and are not an impeachable offense at all? What rot!

Persons of lesser positions have been put in jail for less. Shouldn’t the bar for the person who is fifth in line in the hierarchy of the country be held to a higher (rather than a lower) standard?

Akbayan Rep. Walden Bello points out that the Supreme Court is using a double standard: “If the Supreme Court has sent two men to jail last year for dishonesty in their statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN), how come it has turned a blind eye to Chief Justice Renato Corona’s duplicity in his own SALN?”

Bello raised this question after realizing that Corona did not report in his 2003-2006 SALN that someone within his 6th degree of consanguinity was also working in the government — his wife Cristina was Chair, President and CEO of the Camp John Hay Development Authority.

Bello says the SC’s affirmation of the conviction of Rogelio Galeos and Paulino Ong for nepotism “smacked of double standard” when seen in the light of the TRO it issued to stop the scrutiny of Corona’s dollar accounts in PSBank.

“If what House prosecutors have unearthed would not be enough to convict Corona, nothing will. In fact, his P19.7 million deposit in PSBank and P12 million ending balance in 2010 at BPI should prove the deceitfulness in his SALNs.”

The other members of the Supreme Court should stop coddling their Chief Justice when he is breaking the law. The SC Justices should stand aside and let their Chief fight his own battles. If they continue to do their best to shield Corona, they will only destroy themselves and the SC — unless, of course, they are all in the same boat — with their own hidden funds in the least likely places.

The Supreme Court should not be a sanctuary for scoundrels, says Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno. She’s right, of course; but, who listens to her among her peers?

***

We have a letter: “Thank you for that very nice article (Culture of Impunity at the SC) . We need more of such exposure against the abuses of the SC.

“Please send a copy to Fr. Bernas also and ask him to explain the aim of the framers of constitution in giving the power to impeach to congress and power to decide on Senate when they knew that it is impossible to have an all lawyers as its members. If by his arguments the Impeachment court’s decision could be reviewed by SC, definitely it will fail because of the lack of background in legislation. Hence impeachment court as envisioned by the framers should and must decide not by question of law alone but by what is truth, and this truth cannot be blocked by any technicality of law.

“Thank you and please write more to educate us.” — EJ Flores, Las Piñas

***

Readers who missed a column can access www.duckyparedes.com/blogs. This is updated daily. Your reactions are welcome at duckyparedes@yahoo.com

Corona goes back on his own words

BY AMADO P. MACASAET

MALAYA

‘Presiding Officer Enrile and Senator-Judge Defensor-Santiago cavalierly dismissed the Nixon case as one that applies only as a precedent In the US.’

OUR piece on the sanctity of the impeachment court and how it is beyond the pale of judicial authority merited the following comment from a lawyer who said his name is not as important as this thoughts on the subject:

***

An impeachment proceeding is a remedy for offenses against the people and entirely results from removal of impeachable officers from their positions for violating the mandate that public office is a public trust. In fact, in his separate opinion in Francisco Jr. vs. House of Representatives, 415 SCRA 44 (2003), involving the impeachment proceedings against then Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr., then Associate Justice Renato Corona wrote in his own words:

“Incorporated in the 1987 Constitution are devices meant to prevent abuse by the three branches of government. One Is the House of Representatives’ exclusive power of impeachment for the removal of impeachable officers from their positions for violating the mandate that public office is a public trust.

Impeachment under the Philippine Constitution, as a remedy for serious political offenses against the people, runs parallel to that of the U.S. Constitution whose framers regarded it as a political weapon against executive tyranny. It was meant to fend against the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the Chief Magistrate.

Even if an impeachable official enjoys immunity, he can still be removed in extreme cases to protect the public.”

Thus, Article XI is the exception to the general grant of power to the SC under Article VIII. The exception is manifest in the grant of the sole power to the Impeachment Court to try and decide all impeachment cases. The grant of sole power is clear and unqualified. Thus, the SC may not interfere in any aspect of the impeachment case.

Further, the ruling by the US Supreme Court in Nixon vs. United States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993), is persuasive considering that the provisions of the US Constitution on impeachment are practically the same as the provisions of our Constitution on impeachment.

Section 3(6), Article I of the US Constitution provides:

“The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.

When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the Members present”

Thus, in Nixon vs. United States, the US Supreme Court held that the power to try and decide cases of impeachment belongs only to the Senate. In interpreting the phrase “sole power”, the US Supreme Court said:

‘We think that the word ‘sole’ is of considerable significance.

Indeed, the word ‘sole’ appears only one other time in the Constitution-with respect to the House of Representatives’ Power of Impeachment.” Art. I. Sec. 2, cl. 5 . The common sense meaning of the word ‘sole’ is that the Senate alone shall have authority to determine whether an individual

should be acquitted or convicted. The dictionary definition bears this out. ‘Sole’ is defined as ‘having no companion,’ ‘solitary,’ ‘being the only one,’ and ‘functioning… independently and without assistance or interference.’.

If the courts may review the actions of the Senate in order to determine whether that body ‘tried’ an impeached official. It is difficult to see how the Senate would be ‘functioning …

independently and without assistance or interference …

***

“There are two additional reasons why the Judiciary. and the Supreme Court in particular, were not chosen to have any role in impeachments. First, the framers recognized that most likely there would be two sets of proceedings for individuals who commit impeachable offenses–the impeachment trial and a separate

criminal trial. In fact, the Constitution explicitly provides for two separate proceedings.

The Framers deliberately separated the two forums to avoid raising the specter of bias and to ensure independent judgments:

‘Would it be proper that the persons, who had disposed of his fame and his most valuable rights as a citizen in one trial, should in another trial, for the same offence, be also the disposers of his life and his fortune?

Would there not be the greatest reason to apprehend, that error in the first sentence would be the parent of error in the second sentence? That the strong bias of one decision would be apt to overrule the influence of any new lights, which might be brought to vary the complexion of another decision?.

Certainly judicial review of the Senate’s “trial” would introduce the same risk of bias as would participation in the trial itself.

Second, Judicial review would be inconsistent with the framers’ insistence that our system be one of checks and balances. In our constitutional system, impeachment was designed to be the only check o n the Judicial Branch by the Legislature. On the topic of judicial accountability, Hamilton wrote:

‘The precautions for their responsibility are comprised in the article respecting impeachments. They are liable to be impeached for mal conduct by the House of Representatives, and tried by the Senate, and if convicted, may be dismissed from office and disqualified for holding any other.

This is the only provision on the point, which is consistent with the necessary independence of the judicial character, ‘and is the only one which we find in our own constitution in respect to our own judges.

Judicial involvement in impeachment proceedings, even if only for purposes of Judicial review, is counterintuitive because it would eviscerate the important constitutional check” placed on the Judiciary by the Framers.

Nixon’s argument would place final reviewing authority with respect to impeachments in the hands of the same body that the impeachment process is meant to regulate.

Nevertheless, Nixon argues that judicial review is necessary in order to place a check on the Legislature. Nixon fears that if the Senate is given unreviewable authority to interpret the Impeachment Trial Clause, there is a grave risk that the Senate will usurp judicial power. The Framers anticipated this objection and created two constitutional safeguards to keep the Senate in check. The first safeguard is that the whole of the impeachment power is divided between the two legislative bodies, with the House given the right to accuse and the

Senate given the right to judge.

This split of authority avoids the inconvenience of making the same persons both accusers and judges; and guards against the danger of persecution from the prevalency of a factious spirit in either of those

branches. The second safeguard is the two-thirds supermajority vote requirement. Hamilton explained that “[a]s the concurrence of two-thirds of the senate will be requisite to a condemnation, the security to innocence, from this additional circumstance, will be as complete as itself can desire.’

Presiding Officer Enrile and Senator-Judge Defensor-Santiago cavalierly dismissed the Nixon case as one that applies only as a precedent In the US.

However, what they failed to acknowledge is that the system of impeachment under our Constitution is drawn from the impeachment system provided under the US Constitution upon which the Nixon case was decided. Clearly, the Nixon case is instructive, at the least, on how the impeachment process is to be conducted.

In sum, interference by the SC in the impeachment trial violates and totally disregards the system of checks and balances under the Constitution and the constitutional provisions on accountability of public officers.

http://www.malaya.com.ph/02162012/edmacasaet.html

It’s safer here

Source: Journal Online

www.journal.com.ph

We don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

It’s not only more fun in the Philippines.

It’s also safer to keep your funds secret here than in Switzerland. Got that?

Yes, especially if it’s tainted cash.

So step right in, folks. We welcome mob money, narco-cash, jueteng proceeds, and other dividends of criminal activities.

Our financial system must be awash in dirty money.

But is it an honor for our banking institutions, our monetary enforcers, and our financial legislation?

Would the Transparency International give the country accolades or citation? Is an award forthcoming from the Bank for International Settlements?

“The world will now know that Philippine foreign currency deposit accounts provide a much better safe haven for ill-gotten wealth than Swiss bank accounts,” Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio said.

But Carpio said the law guaranteeing the secrecy of foreign currency deposits should not turn the country into a haven for ill-gotten wealth.

He argued thus in his dissenting opinion on the SC’s issuance of a temporary restraining order on the opening of the dollar accounts of Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Carpio said the majority decision to issue the TRO is a mockery of all existing laws.

He said Republic Act 6426, the Foreign Currency Deposit Act, is intended to protect non-residents to encourage the inflow of foreign currency deposits in Philippine banks.

“What the majority has ruled is that government officials and employees have no obligation to disclose their foreign currency accounts, and that the public has no right to know such foreign currency accounts,” he said.

Carpio said government officials and employees can simply open foreign currency accounts and deposit money to avoid scrutiny.

Since Corona had already admitted that he owns the foreign currency accounts in Philippine Savings Bank, he now has the obligation to disclose these foreign currency deposits to the people, he added.

In a separate dissenting opinion, Associate Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno said PSBank should have not been entitled to the injunctive relief since its petition was based on “mere news report, exaggerated theories of a possible bank run, or stubborn fears of culpability”.

“Granting the prayer of petitioners for injunctive relief is tantamount to endorsing their position on absolute confidentiality, so much so that higher values, such as public accountability, cannot even be considered as a valid exception to the said privilege,” she said.

The court granted the prayer of PSBank and its president Pascual Garcia III, invoking the provision on absolute confidentiality of foreign currency deposits under the RA 6426, which bars any inquiry or examination as to the details of such foreign currency accounts.

The TRO would result in “an iniquitous situation, where the supreme interest of the public to maintain accountability among public officers is relegated to the sidelines in favor of a statutory privilege that arose purely out of economic considerations,” Sereno said.

Associate Justices Diosdado Peralta, Mariano del Castillo, and Estela Perlas-Bernabe concurred in this position.

Those who voted for the TRO were Associate Justices Teresita Leonardo-de Castro, Arturo Brion, Lucas Bersamin, Roberto Abad, Martin Villarama Jr., Jose Mendoza, Jose Perez and Bienvenido Reyes.

Corona inhibited from the deliberations, being the subject of the case.

The Trials of Al Capone and CJ Corona

Telltale Signs 

By Rodel Rodis

If Senator Miriam Santiago had been the defense lawyer of Al Capone in his tax evasion trial in 1931, she may have argued for the exclusion of all evidence of unexplained wealth as she warned her Philippine Senate colleagues this week that exposing the dollar bank accounts of Chief Justice Renato Corona in the Senate Impeachment Trial would have a “devastating effect” on the Philippine economy and “would drive away the capital market for our country.”

Al Capone’s lawyers employed similar apocalyptic hyperbole when they exhorted a Chicago jury to “stand as a bulwark against an oppressive government that was using the tax law as a means to stow Al Capone away.” One Capone defense lawyer implored the all-male jury: “You, gentlemen, are the last barrier between the defendant and the encroachment and perversion of the government and the law in this case.”

Unfortunately for Capone, he faced a judge who was not at all like the Philippine Supreme Court justices who issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) preventing the disclosure of the dollar accounts of their Chief Justice to comply, they said, with the strict disclosure rules of the Foreign Currency Deposit Act of the Philippines (Republic Act No. 6426) on dollar accounts.

The problem with their argument, as Justice Antonio Carpio explained in his dissent, is that RA 6426 was specifically intended to protect foreign depositors and not Filipinos. If Ferdinand Marcos had deposited his hundreds of millions of US dollars in foreign currency accounts with local banks – instead of in Swiss banks – under RA 6426, “he would have gotten away with his loot under this ruling of the majority,” Justice Carpio wrote.

US government prosecutors faced a more difficult task in accumulating evidence of tax evasion against Capone because he had no bank deposits in his name unlike CJ Corona who kept his funds in his own name in the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) and in the Philippine Savings Bank (PSBank). In two of his peso accounts in the PSB, Corona had P12 million pesos while a BPI Branch Manager stated under oath that Corona had a 2010 end of the year balance of 12 million pesos in his BPI account.

In the PSBank, Corona owned 10 accounts – 5 in peso accounts and 5 in dollar accounts, one of which had an initial deposit of $700,000. Before the PSBank could disclose the amounts of the four other dollar accounts of CJ Corona, it sought and obtained a TRO.

In investigating Capone, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) noted that Capone failed to pay taxes on any of his earnings from bootlegging, prostitution, embezzlement, gambling, and other illegal activities. Capone scoffed at the IRS investigation and said: “The government can’t collect legal taxes from illegal money.”

But Capone was wrong. The US Supreme Court, in the 1927 case of United States v. Sullivan had ruled that the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination did not protect Manley Sullivan, a bootlegger convicted of failing to file a tax return showing the profits from his illegal businesses.

The forensic accounting method used by the IRS to nail Capone was called the “net-worth method” where IRS investigators examine a combination of the subject’s assets and liabilities in relation to all sources of income. If a taxpayer’s net worth, taking into account assets offset by liabilities, increased during a taxation year, the receipt of money or property to cause that increase would be considered taxable sources, the failure to pay taxes would constitute the crime of tax evasion.

The IRS also employed an “expenditures method” where expenses are matched against reported income. If there is a gap that cannot be explained, that may indicate unreported income.

House prosecutors had presented evidence that CJ Corona owned 26 pieces of real property including a Bellagio penthouse condominium that he purchased for P14 million pesos, about P12 million below its market value.

CJ Corona declared under oath in his 2010 Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) that his cash assets amounted to just P3.5 million pesos. According to the tax records of Corona, as disclosed at the senate trial, in 2010, he paid only P176,577.32 pesos in taxes based on a gross income of P657, 755.57. In 2009, he only paid P155,556.20 in taxes on a gross income of P621, 528.62.

How did Corona purchase 26 pieces of real property and deposit P31 million pesos in peso accounts and $700,000 in dollar accounts on an annual salary of P657,755?

In building the tax evasion case against Capone, the IRS had to examine department store, jewelry store, car dealership, and hotel records for evidence of Capone’s expenditures, uncovering purchases of high-end furniture, custom-made shirts, diamond-studded belt buckles, gold-plated dinner service, hotel suites, and a Lincoln limousine.

The federal trial of Al Capone began on October 5, 1931 at the federal courthouse in downtown Chicago with the prosecution presenting evidence that Capone owned gambling halls and derived substantial profits from those businesses. Other prosecution witnesses presented evidence of Capone’s lavish lifestyle. A clerk at Chicago’s Metropole Hotel testified that Capone rented the hotel’s most expensive suites and hosted expensive parties paying cash “in hundred dollar bills, sometimes five hundred dollar bills.”

Capone’s lawyers presented their case in one day claiming that Capone was a “horse-racing addict” who had lost as much money as he earned, neglecting to point out that gambling losses are only deductible against gambling winnings so Capone would still have been required to pay taxes on his income, even if the sources were undeclared.

In his summation, US Attorney George Johnson said, “This is a case that future generations will remember….They will remember it because it will establish whether a man can so conduct his affairs such that he is above the government and above the law.”

On October 18, 1931, a Chicago jury deliberated for eight hours before returning a verdict of “guilty” on the charge of tax evasion. Capone was sentenced to 11 years in the federal penitentiary, most of which he spent in Alcatraz.

The Philippine Supreme Court majority, in supporting their CJ to prevent the disclosure of his dollar accounts, has basically declared that Corona “can conduct his affairs such that he is above the government and above the law.”

(Rodel50@gmail.com)

‘Catch me if you can’

PerryScope

By Perry Diaz

At a press conference at Club Filipino on February 12, 2012, Corona’s defense lawyers accused Malacañang of trying to influence senator-judges to vote for the opening of Chief Justice Corona's dollar account at the impeachment trial. Photo credit: Ralph Joel

Has it occurred to you that when a person tries to convince others, more doubts are raised about that person’s sincerity or honesty?  Such is the situation that Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona has gotten himself into.  It’s likened to a person who falls into a quicksand; the more he tries to get out of it, the faster he sinks.  But if that person remained immobile he’d still sink nevertheless.  The lesson here is: Don’t go near a quicksand.

And that’s precisely what Corona did when he accepted an illegal appointment from then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo during a period when a ban on “midnight appointments” was in effect.  He jumped into a quicksand knowing full well that he might not get out of it!   It’s a case of “come what may” or “bahala na.”

It did not then come as a surprise when a year and a half after he reached the pinnacle of his career – a dream come true – Corona found himself in a quicksand of legal and moral questions about his ascendancy to the highest position of the judicial branch of government.   And now, he is struggling to save his career and what is left of his reputation.  He might have a chance of saving his career; however, it seems that his reputation is now stained indelibly as a result of a slew of damaging evidence that came out at the Senate impeachment trial in which he is accused of culpable violation of the Constitution, graft and corruption, and betrayal of public trust.

When the Senate impeachment trial began, Corona’s battery of topnotch lawyers led by retired Supreme Court Justice Serafin Cuevas took the offensive like a German blitzkrieg, which caused heavy damage to the House prosecutors’ initial presentation.  Even the experienced private prosecutors who were helping the House prosecutors seemed ill equipped in battling the legendary Cuevas.  In his cross-examination of the prosecutors’ witnesses, Cuevas assaulted them with a “take no prisoner” stance and at one point declared one witness as “bankrupt.”  He was brutally effective in pulverizing the testimony of the witnesses and neutralizing the prosecutors with his courtroom maneuvers… until he met his Waterloo.

Discrepancies

An unexpected turn of events happened last February 6 (Day 12 of the trial) when Cuevas cross-examined Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Commissioner Kim Henares.  Henares testified that she found discrepancies in Corona’s Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALNs) in the years from 2003 to 2010.  She gave a detailed breakdown of the discrepancies.  For instance, in 2010 – when he was already Chief Justice – Corona declared only P14.5 million in his SALN when in fact he owned P50 million in assets.

Cuevas abruptly moved to have Henares’ testimony stricken from the impeachment trial records, saying that Henares was not an “expert witness.”  But the private prosecutor, Arthur Lim, retorted and pointed out that Cuevas had just qualified her to be an “expert witness.”  The president officer, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, agreed with Lim and let Henares’ testimony stay.  It was only then that the foxy Cuevas realized that Lim had outfoxed him.

Unreported wealth

The stinger came on February 8 (Day 14) when Philippine Savings Bank (PSBank) president Pascual Garcia III testified on five domestic accounts of Corona, which revealed that as of December 31, 2010, Corona’s total peso deposits at PSBank was P19,728,555.39.  This did not include Corona’s five dollar accounts, which he claimed couldn’t be disclosed under R.A. 6426, the Foreign Currency Deposit Act.

The following day (Day 15), Leonora Dizon, branch manager of the Bank of Philippine Islands (BPI) presented bank documents that showed that Corona’s checking account had an ending balance of P12,024,067.70 as of December 31, 2010.

Let’s do our math: Between the two banks, Corona’s cash deposits – excluding his secret dollar accounts – total P31,752,623.09.  That’s P28,252,623.09 more than the P3.5 million he declared in his 2010 SALN.  However, if you add the secret dollar deposit account of $700,000 that Corona allegedly deposited in 2008 at PSBank, then the total unreported amount could be as high as P66 million in 2010.  Incidentally, Corona through Cuevas admitted the existence of his dollar accounts; however, he refused to authorize disclosure at this time saying that he’d disclose them in due time.  Hmm… do I smell a stinking fish here?

Attack the “enemy”

With this incontrovertible evidence, Corona is faced with a difficult situation.  How could he convince the impeachment court — and the court of public opinion – of his innocence?  He must have realized then that the impeachment court is an unfriendly territory.  He had to find another venue where he could extricate himself out of the quicksand he trapped himself into.

On February 12, on the eve of the Day 15 trial, several members of Corona’s defense team held a press conference where they alleged that an unnamed source gave them “reliable” information that President Benigno Aquino III through Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. attempted to bribe the senator-judges P100 million each to disregard the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) issued by the Supreme Court on the disclosure of Corona’s dollar accounts.

As he attacked the “enemy” using the media, Corona also petitioned the Supreme Court to issue a TRO and void the impeachment proceedings.  In an en banc session last February 9, the high court decided to defer issuing a TRO; however, it required the respondents to comment within 10 days.

Last February 13, Corona upped the ante and filed a supplemental petition to reinforce his bid to stop the impeachment trial.  He accused five senator-judges of being partial against him. One senator-judge opined that Corona’s strategy in filing the supplemental petition is to open the way for a mistrial.

“Acquittal by TRO”

Evidently, Corona is now taking an unorthodox approach to secure his acquittal, he is playing “catch me if you can” by bringing the Supreme Court into play; that is, each time the prosecution gets closer to pinning him down, he would run to the Supreme Court and ask for a TRO.  With at least eight justices – all Arroyo appointees — closely allied with him, he has a good chance of getting a TRO to stop the impeachment proceedings for good.

The question is: Does the Senate impeachment court have the temerity to defy the Supreme Court and proceed with the impeachment trial?

It is interesting to note that before the impeachment trial started last January, Enrile commented during a radio interview.  He cautioned both Malacañang and the Supreme Court against meddling in the trial.  He said that only God and the people could dictate terms on him and that the only one who could stop the trial is “the might of the military.”

In my opinion, Corona would eventually get his “acquittal by TRO,” thanks to his allies in the Supreme Court.  And as expected, Enrile would stand by his word.  But he has only one vote.  Would the majority of the senator-judges back him up and defy the Supreme Court?  Or would they side with Senators Miriam Defensor-Santiago and Joker Arroyo who have repeatedly manifested their beliefs that the Supreme Court is higher than the impeachment court and therefore should prevail?

Last February 14 (Day 17), his 88th birthday, Enrile was asked what he wished for himself on his birthday.  He said, “My wish is for God to give me the stamina and divine light to do what is right in the remaining years of my life.”

For someone who had been in both the wrong side and right side of history, how would he want to be remembered as the presiding officer of the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona?

(PerryDiaz@gmail.com)

# # #

 “The world suffers a lot. Not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people!” – Napoleon