Is the Chief Justice worth keeping?
Today or tomorrow, the Senate of the Republic of the Philippines, sitting as an Impeachment Court, will decide whether or not Renato C. Corona, the 23rd Chief Justice of the country’s Supreme Court, culpably violated the Constitution and betrayed public trust.
The prosecution and defense teams will respectively argue for Corona’s conviction or acquittal before each senator-juror votes him guilty or not guilty.
From an initial eight, there are now three articles of impeachment under consideration.
The first is based on Corona’s failure to be forthright in his Sworn Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Networth.
Last week, he admitted owning assets of more than US $2 million and over P80 million—all undeclared, he said, because he believes that Republic Act 6426 or the Foreign Currency Deposits Act (FCDA) shrouds his greenbacks in absolute confidentiality and his pesos are not entirely his but co-mingled with his kin’s.
Even granting that Corona acted in good faith in leaning on the FCDA to keep some assets under wraps, he nevertheless repeatedly flouted the spirit of truthfulness that animates our transparency and accountability laws, thereby forfeiting the Filipino people’s faith in him.
Worse, the Chief Justice appears to have perjured by undervaluing his dollar deposits to about US $2 million, since, according to the prosecution, he withdrew more than US $3 million last December.
The second article stems from Corona’s failure to meet the Constitution’s standards of “competence, integrity, probity, and independence” for a member of the judiciary.
The Chief Justice is accused of:
1. allowing the Supreme Court to act on letters filed by a counsel which caused the issuance of flip-flopping decisions in final and executory cases,
2. entanglement with former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, representative of the 2nd district of Pampanga, through her appointment of his wife to office and
3. discussing with litigants cases pending before the SC.
In the third article of impeachment, the Chief Justice is accused of partiality in granting a temporary restraining order (TRO) against a travel ban on Arroyo and her husband Jose Miguel, deeming the order effective even if the couple failed to comply with its conditions.
That would have given the Arroyos the chance to escape prosecution.
If Corona is acquitted, he will remain in office. If convicted, he will be removed, barred forever from government service and prosecuted and tried in a court of law.
To render a just decision, every senator-juror needs to answer in essence only one question:
Shall we foist on the sovereign people a Chief Justice, a supposed model lawyer and public servant, who dissembles as he loathes our Constitution’s demand for accountability, accommodates trifling with jurisprudence, and lawyers for his political patrons?
