Secretary Edwin Lacierda
Malacañang assailed the Supreme Court for declaring a court holiday Wednesday, supposedly to allow employees of the judiciary to attend a hastily planned rally in support of the impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona.
“The sudden declaration of a court holiday on December 14 is yet another example of how justice can be subverted to further the interest of one,” President Benigno Aquino III’s spokesperson, Edwin Lacierda, said in a news briefing.
Lacierda said court hearings, including those scheduled on the case of the 2009 Maguindanao massacre, had been reset so that employees could rally behind Corona.
“If this is true, then one must ask if the judiciary is not being manipulated into participating in one man’s personal issues,” Lacierda said, and challenged Corona to order the employees to go back to work.
He called on members of the judiciary “to not let themselves be used to further the political agenda of one man and his patron.”
Lacierda said it was Jose Midas Marquez, the high court’s spokesperson and administrator, who declared the court holiday to rally support for Corona.
“The Office of the Court Administrator (OCA) issued the text messages,” Lacierda said, adding that a memo issued by a Bacolod judge “based on instructions from the court administrator” had been forwarded to him.
He said there was a “deliberate confusion,” purportedly to allow Marquez to issue a denial.
“But clearly there is a concerted effort to suspend work today (Wednesday), this afternoon, to precisely hear the statement of Chief Justice Corona,” Lacierda said.
In reply to a question, he said Malacañang did not have a copy of the memo. But he said it was on Twitter.
Lacierda also said the court holiday was not observed nationwide as he said he received information that the courts in Marawi City and Cotabato were functioning Wednesday.
Asked what was wrong with the declaration of a court holiday under the circumstances, he said: “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
Citing his experience as a practicing lawyer of the Metropolitan Trial Court, he said the hearing schedules would be set back by six months.
Lowest trust rating
Ronald Llamas, Mr. Aquino’s adviser on political affairs, expressed the belief that the prevailing negative perception of Corona would help convince the senator-judges to convict him of the impeachable offenses brought against him by the House of Representatives.
“I think the senators will realize the strength of the impeachment complaint as well as the overwhelming support of the people against Corona,” Llamas said Wednesday in a text message.
“The mere fact that Corona’s trust ratings in the recent Pulse Asia survey were the lowest among key government officials shows that the people are convinced his loyalty is only to his former boss GMA (former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) and not to the people,” Llamas said.
In the survey conducted on Nov. 10-23 among 1,200 respondents nationwide, Corona received a trust rating of 29 percent.
“I believe that as representatives of the people, just like the almost 200 members of the House of Representatives who impeached Corona, the Senate will side with the people,” Llamas said.
The President earlier expressed confidence that the articles of impeachment were so strong that the senators would have no choice but to accede to the public sentiment against the Chief Justice.
Nonetheless, he indicated that he would not sit idly by as the impeachment trial proceeds in the Senate.
“Shall we say … that I know what I’m supposed to do? And I will do what is necessary to fulfill my oath of service to the Filipino people,” Mr. Aquino said when asked on Tuesday if he would exert a personal effort to convince senators to vote for Corona’s conviction.
Corona’s impeachment is the second that the Aquino administration successfully pushed against an impeachable official. The first was against then Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, who chose to resign even before the impeachment proceedings could start in the Senate.
Not the judiciary
At the House, Speaker Feliciano Belmonte said Corona should stop saying that his impeachment was an attack on the judiciary.
“You know, the Chief Justice should not confuse himself with the judiciary. The judiciary is not him, he is not the judiciary. And I really cannot imagine the President declaring a holiday if he has to face something like that,” Belmonte told reporters.
He said Corona should just defend himself before the Senate sitting as an impeachment court and parry all eight allegations of wrongdoing as contained in the articles of impeachment submitted by the House.
Belmonte dismissed speculations of a constitutional crisis as a result of the Corona trial.
He also denied employing a “carrot-and-stick” approach in having all 188 House members sign the articles of impeachment in exchange for the release of their Priority Development Assistance Fund.
“No, nobody was misled. In fact, I made it very plain from the very beginning that if they don’t want to sign, it’s OK, we will continue to be friends and allies, and so forth,” he said.
Belmonte also said Corona’s impeachment was a test case of the people’s resolve to swiftly reform the judiciary.
“There has to be a first time for everything… I don’t see anything wrong with that,” he later told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
He said he was surprised that even Fr. Joaquin Bernas, a constitutionalist and Inquirer columnist, was talking about a chilling effect of the Corona trial on other justices of the Supreme Court as well as ordinary people.
“As I said, the Chief Justice is a person. He is not the judiciary… I did say it’s a grave, historic decision because it’s the first, because this is the very procedure provided for in the Constitution. This is not an extraconstitutional process. This is a constitutional process,” Belmonte stressed.
He pointed out that even US Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln were also very critical of the Supreme Court during their time.
Belmonte also denied that Mr. Aquino was behind the impeachment, but admitted that his public expression of displeasure over how Corona was purportedly blocking his reforms helped fast-track the complaint.
No crisis
Iloilo Representative Niel Tupas Jr., chair of the House committee on justice that initiated the impeachment, said the Chief Justice was wrong in saying that the entire judiciary was being put on trial.
“We impeached the Chief Justice, not the Supreme Court. There is no constitutional crisis because this is a constitutional process. Besides, there are still other justices left to continue their jobs,” Tupas said.
According to Tupas, the 11-member panel of prosecutors to be led by himself will be assisted by activist lawyers because no private lawyers or law firms have expressed their intention to help prosecute Corona.
He said even his own law firm—Belo, Gozun, Elma, Parel and Asuncion—which earlier supported him in the impeachment of then Ombudsman Gutierrez, would not back him on this case.
“No private mainstream lawyer or premier law firm wants to help us prosecute Corona, probably because they do not want to go against the Supreme Court,” Tupas said.
He said even the Integrated Bar of the Philippines was quiet because “they think we are rocking the Supreme Court.”
Belmonte, however, expressed confidence that the House prosecutors would be able to secure a conviction for Corona even without the help of private lawyers.
“I think there are [private] lawyers who are interested, but the lawyers do not have to do the talking, anyway. They will just provide research and prepare the arguments. Definitely, [the House prosecutors can do it] because they are all good,” the Speaker said.
He said he would act only as adviser to the panel because he had to take care of business in the House.
Originally posted at 01:14 pm | Monday, December 14, 2011