Trial misgivings
Week one of the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona went off without incident, unless you count the initial fumbling of the House prosecution team as something of an incident.
As of this writing, the House prosecution promised some explosive disclosures that, as Deputy House Speaker Erin Tañada suggested, would cause Corona’s defense team to stand up and object more than once.
Initial impressions of the courtroom war between the House prosecutors and the defense lawyers were tilted somewhat in favor of Corona’s team which is stacked with legal heavyweights who know their way out of every trial procedure and had, on Day 2, been showing the prosecution as amateur lightweights, an observation long shared by Sen. Miriam Santiago of the current administration.
In contrast to his fire in the 2000 impeachment trial of former president Joseph Estrada, Sen. Joker Arroyo initially lent a sympathetic ear to the prosecution’s fumbling of the articles of impeachment but later on warned of a constitutional crisis that would erupt should the senator-judges pursue the statement of assets and liabilities of Chief Justice Corona.
But the senator’s warning had more bark than bite as the Supreme Court itself assured the clerk that it won’t penalize her for turning over Corona’s SALNs to the impeachment court.
Still, that warning more or less serves as an indication of the high stakes being played by both sides. The impeachment proceedings is a long-drawn, drag-out affair, all six projected months of it or about half of this year.
The question is how far would this trial go in getting to the truth behind the charges against Corona and how far would public opinon support a search for truth.
More importantly, would this search prove fruitful or a colossal waste of energy?
That’s the burden the prosecution and to a larger extent the Aquino administration has in its campaign to cleanse the government’s ranks of his predecessor’s minions.
That starts by showing in clear, crisp, no uncertain terms how Corona benefited from his association with the former president, who some quarters claim, has budgeted P200 million to defend her choice of Chief Justice.
Anyone willing to plunk that kind of money is playing for keeps.
For now we are thankful that the impeachment trial is being televised for the public who finds it to their advantage to monitor the proceedings daily even if it brims with verbose legalese.
The country’s democratic institutions are at stake here.
