INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines – Twenty senators, including Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile, on Tuesday found Chief Justice Renato Corona guilty of Article 2 of the impeachment complaint filed against him pertaining to his failure to disclose to the public is statement of assets, liabilities, and net worth.
Only three voted to acquit Corona and they were Senators Joker Arroyo, Miriam Defensor-Santiago and Ferdinand “Bong-Bong” Marcos Jr.
“The Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, having tried Renato C. Corona Chief Justice of the Supreme Court…have found him guilty of the charge under Article 2 of the said articles of impeachment,” Enrile said.
Enrile then directed the Senate Secretary acting as the clerk of court to give the respondent a copy of the resolution, as well as the Speaker of the House, the Supreme Court, the
Judicial Bar Council and President Benigno Aquino III.
Aside from Enrile, the 19 senators who convicted Corona were the following:
- Senator Edgardo Angara
- Senator Alan Peter Cayetano
- Senator Pia Cayetano
- Senator Franklin Drilon
- Senate Pro Tempore Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada
- Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero
- Senator Teofisto Guingona III
- Senator Gregorio Honasan II
- Senator Panfilo Lacson
- Senator Manuel Lapid
- Senator Loren Legarda
- Senator Sergio Osmeña III
- Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan
- Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III
- Senator Ralph Recto
- Senator Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr.
- Senate Majority Leader Vicente “Tito” Sotto III
- Senator Antonio Trillanes IV
- Senate Manuel Villar
Corona is considered barred from public office after senators voted to convict him on charges of betraying public trust and violating the constitution.
He testified last week that it wasn’t only him who is on trial and challenged all 188 lawmakers who impeached him to disclose their dollar accounts – but there were few takers.
The nationally televised 5-month-long proceedings gripped the nation like a soap opera with emotional testimonies, political grandstanding and a sideshow family drama.
Prosecutors, most of whom are Aquino’s allies from the House of Representatives, argued that Corona concealed his wealth and offered “lame excuses” to avoid public accountability.
Corona said that he had accumulated his wealth from foreign exchange when he was still a student. Rep. Rodolfo Farinas, one of the prosecutors, ridiculed the 63-year-old justice, saying he “wants us to believe that when he was in grade four in 1959 he was such a visionary that he already started buying dollars.”
“It is clear that these were excuses and lies made before the Senate and the entire world,” Farinas said in Monday’s closing arguments, adding that Corona had declared in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth less than 2 percent of what he actually owned.
Addressing not only the senators but a public hungry for transparency in a country where corruption is endemic, the rich and powerful rarely prosecuted and a third of the population of 94 million lives on $1 a day, prosecutors sought to discredit Corona’s defense with references to a lifestyle beyond the means of most of the people. With a report from AP
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