The lady is not for turning

Never grow a wishbone  where your backbone should be,” columnist Dorothy Parker would rib friends in New York’s lower East Side. And backbone is what Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales always had.

Explain within 72 hours the  $10 million stashed in two dollar accounts at Philippine Savings Bank, Morales asked impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona. Five BPI peso deposits appear “grossly disproportionate” to income.

As a ramrod-straight  Supreme Court associate  justice, she penned the 8-7 decision that scrubbed  president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s draft  memo of agreement with Moro Islamic Liberation Front on ancestral domain.

“The furtive process by which the MOA-AD was crafted is in excess of legal authority,” she wrote. “(It is) whimsical, capricious, oppressive… The concept  presupposes that the (Bangsamoro Juridical Entity) is a state and implies it is on the way to independence….”

She whacked the majority for allowing Eduardo Cojuangco to dip into levies extorted from indigent coconut farmers and pocket P16.2 million in San Miguel Corp. shares. “The biggest joke to hit the century.”

Three complaints against Corona are before the Ombudsman: a) Fudging Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth excluding properties in Bellagio to Spanish Bay; b) Reporting P27.2 million of actual P31.7 million income; c) Unexplained wealth of  P24.6 million in five accounts at PSBank and P12 million with BPI.

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago scoffed at the claim by Corona’s counsel that the Ombudsman “has no jurisdiction over the Chief Justice.” “The  $10 million does not exist,”  counsel said. Charges are  black propaganda before the impeachment trial  resumes Monday. Like a Land Registration Authority list and letters to the editor, they’re “phoney.”

“Our fears are shaped by past betrayals,” Viewpoint  noted. (PDI/March 23, 2010) “A Supreme Court that grovels before a president whistles up a gross image… when a Chief  Justice trotted behind Imelda Marcos as parasol bearer.”

“To many, that picture showed the extent to which the spirit of the judiciary had been sapped,” observed 2003 Magsaysay journalism awardee Shiela Coronel. Can we still   repose hopes in constitutional institutions that crumbled before?

Yes. Thanks in part to  strong women who  challenged perverted institutions.

Tiene cojones. “She has balls,” was the irreverent  accolade that people paid to Cecilia Muñoz Palma. (1913-2006) The first woman Supreme Court justice didn’t play ball when her  male colleagues surrendered to Marcos the 12th century prerogative of courts to rule on habeas corpus pleas.

She flayed, in January 1975, the farcical “Citizens Assemblies”. “A referendum under martial rule can be of no far-reaching significance,” Palma wrote with Justice  Claudio Teehankhee. “It is accomplished under a climate of fear.”

Tiene cojones is also what people said about  auditor Heidi Mendoza, banker Clarissa Ocampo and the late Presidential Commission on Good Government commissioner and 2004 Magsaysay awardee Haydee Yorac. These were women who, when push came to shove, did not tuck tail.

Mendoza  audited the AFP Comptroller’s Office and documented that, under Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia, the office plundered AFP funds. That included a P200 million reimbursement check from the United Nations for Filipino peacekeepers.

Mendoza, who resigned from an Asian Development Bank job to testify, saw her ignored report blow open an almost P510 million Armed Forces of the Philippines loss traced by Congress hearings to comptrollers. Garcia is in prison today.

“I was a foot away” when president Joseph Estrada signed a P500-million loan as “Jose Velarde,” then senior vice president of Equitable-PCI Bank Clarissa Ocampo told the impeachment court. There was an attempt to assign the trust account of Jose Velarde to Jaime Dichavez, a presidential crony. “I refused to certify it,” Ocampo said. She later received threats on her life.

“The sole and only nobility is integrity.” That feistiness showed in  Haydee Yorac’s work from peace negotiator to Commission on Elections official. Under Yorac’s   watch, PCGG recovered for the national treasury US $683 million from Marcos’ Swiss bank accounts.

“From her sickbed, Yorac knows she will not complete the task herself,” the Ramon Magsaysay Award  Foundation citation noted.  Others will rise to it. “No one is indispensable,” she reminds us all. “Making a difference is enough.”

From her track record, Carpio-Morales won’t cave in when clashes erupt over Corona’s dollar aand peso accounts. One can almost hear Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s challenge to the 1980 Conservative convention. “U-turn if you will. The lady is not for turning.”