Resign if treatment is unfair, Corona told

MANILA, Philippines – Chief Justice Renato Corona should resign if he feels that he wasn’t getting fair treatment at the impeachment trial, Representative Neptali Gonzales, majority leader of the House of Representatives, said Wednesday.

“Even if you read the petition of the chief justice in the Supreme Court, he heavily criticized the Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, and the senators, at least five of them, as biased and prejudiced against him,” Gonzales said.

He said he could see no reason why the defense panel of Corona has been repeatedly criticizing the senator-judges.

The defense panel disclosed in a press conference Sunday that certain senator-judges were allegedly being offered P100 million by President Benigno Aquino III, through executive secretary Paquito Ochoa, to defy the temporary restraining order issued by the Supreme Court preventing the opening of the dollar accounts of Corona.

He added that a mistrial was not likely because “even though this is a jury, but it’s not strictly speaking a jury trial in the real sense of the word like in America.”

Senator Sergio Osmeña said Tuesday that Corona was setting the stage for a mistrial. Corona had claimed in a petition before the Supreme Court that the senators have lost the “cold neutrality of an impartial judge.”