And now, the Chief Justice of the Republic of the Philippines wishes to be excused.”
Without asking permission from Presiding Judge Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, Chief Justice Renato Corona walked out of the Senate hearing last Tuesday after delivering his speech that lasted for about three hours.
How dramatic is that? Not really, if one had been attentive to the CJ’s sentiments about the trial. His action is simply consistent with his position that views the Senate impeachment trial as “politically motivated, a farce, triggered by a vindictive President.” The standpoint is a complex scenario for an ordinary layman to swallow because while he questions the validity of the impeachment, a position that he could have taken to the extreme by boycotting the trial, yet he is not taking anything to chance. He has, in fact, assembled a top-caliber defense panel to protect his interests before the Senate tribunal.
Weeks before his appearance as witness, the defense was all set for the direct examination and the prosecution carefully laid out a well-prepared contra strategy. Nothing of that sort happened because Corona made a bully pulpit out of the impeachment court by maligning people, who were not there to defend themselves. He did not even spare a dead person from his tirade.
The highlight of CJ Corona’s statement before the Senate is supposedly the conditional waiver that he promised to sign once a senator and all 188 congressmen who signed the Articles of Impeachment will do the same. Still, I think the core issue had been emphasized even before the CJ stepped into the Senate impeachment tribunal last Tuesday.
After the PowerPoint presentation of Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales, observers became interested in how the CJ handled his assets and how he opted to place them in foreign currency deposits, instead of placing them in some business enterprise. Bank officials and investment experts discussed this angle lengthily but the picture that Corona has painted, based on the various foreign currency accounts and transactions over the years, is the more important issue because it is rather unseemly for a Chief Justice.
Before the Senate impeachment court, CJ Corona stated that he had seven accounts in BPI Acropolis branch but all of them were closed from 2004 – 2007 and transferred to another BPI branch. The 18 accounts in BPI Tandang Sora were closed from 2004 to 2007 and transferred to BPI San Francisco del Monte and PSBank-Cainta. And 34 accounts in BPI San Francisco del Monte were closed from 2007 to 2011. The mother investment account is the BPI-San Francisco del Monte account, which was closed on December 2011, so with PSBank-Cainta, closed sometime in 2008 but transferred to another PSBank Branch.
All told, he has only four dollar assets but listening to the movement of the numerous dollar-accounts containing hefty deposits, it could have been very tedious and time consuming.
According to reports, the CJ has no pointman who manages his dollar assets, a situation that suggests he is the one monitoring them. This is reasonable given that, according to him, his savings are fruits of honest labor. A good question to ask is, isn’t he distracted by all these bank transactions? And aren’t magistrates supposed to devote their time and effort studying cases and analyzing legal principles that will help bring about justice and peace to our country?
The bigger lesson in the impeachment of CJ Corona is the sense of privilege of public officials, especially the very powerful, who think they are impervious to rules. Corona admitted he has four dollar accounts but did not declare them in his Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Networth (SALN) because dollar accounts are covered by bank confidentiality laws. That is stretching the law too far. The confidentiality laws on dollar deposits are designed to protect foreign investors from needless hassles, not as an excuse for government officials to conceal information from the public.