When the 23 senators vote today, they will not only cast judgment on Chief Justice Corona’s action –- concealing the total net worth of his cash assets – but set a new standard for all public officials to follow.
Acquit Corona and they make a mockery of the Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) as an instrument of tracking personal wealth, along with constitutional principles of transparency and accountability.
Convict him, and they – along with all other public servants – should expect to be measured by the same rule stick.
The annual filing of the SALN, which has long been routine paperwork for most civil servants and elected public officials, has never been pushed this far as the ultimate test of personal honesty.
If the boss of the highest court in the land is allowed to justify not declaring his nest egg of foreign exchange, which he insists he accumulated of over 40 years of hard work, mostly in the private sector when the US dollar was as strong as P3.50 to $1, who is to say a filing clerk, an army colonel, mayor, governor, congressman or senator shouldn’t be given the same leeway?
And in the 25 years that the requirement of SALN filing has been in the Constitution and laws passed by Congress, who among them – elected or appointed – have been scrupulously following this standard of disclosure?
In yesterday’s final arguments, chief defense counsel Serafin Cuevas was asked by Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, what possible injury would arise if a public officer would voluntarily list in his SALN his foreign currency deposits.
Cuevas feeble reply: the “probability” of “kidnapping or extortion” befalling the honest servant in a country where peace and order “cannot be assured.”
If the Supreme Court’s no. 1 magistrate can’t rely on the pillars of justice to secure his life and fortune in this country, he’s working in the wrong institution. Instead of embodying the majesty of the rule of law, his lawyer suggests that he harbors a deep-seated fear that honesty would only get him into more trouble.
If Corona is complaining of feeling persecuted for being held to a higher standard than most, it’s a misplaced sense of pain – the high bar is where it should be.
No less is expected from the chief of the tribunal of last resort, whose verdicts have finality that cannot be overturned by any force of nature other than the vacillation of its own members.
For the past five months, citizens of a country whose majority live in poverty, have followed TV and radio coverage of the impeachment proceedings and listened to jaw-dropping accounts of personal wealth – real estate acquisitions, dollar accounts, multiple bank accounts.
It’s not an unfamiliar picture in the Philippines. The lives of the powerful in politics and government usually breed great wealth.
What’s not typical is exposing a member of this elite to a lengthy, public trial that measures his career and character on the basis of a single document, an ultimate test of personal honesty.
We saw a broken man take the witness stand and, on the verge of tears, plead for sympathy that his undeclared $2.4 million and P80 million in commingled funds were not an act of evasion from the truth to the degree that would make non-disclosure a culpable violation of the Constitution.
Strike a blow today against Corona, and Congress commits itself to a standard of honesty that should apply to its own members and the rest of the country’s public servants.
When the 23 senators vote today, they will not only cast judgment on Chief Justice Corona’s action –- concealing the total net worth of his cash assets – but set a new standard for all public officials to follow.
Acquit Corona and they make a mockery of the Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) as an instrument of tracking personal wealth, along with constitutional principles of transparency and accountability.
Convict him, and they – along with all other public servants – should expect to be measured by the same rule stick.
The annual filing of the SALN, which has long been routine paperwork for most civil servants and elected public officials, has never been pushed this far as the ultimate test of personal honesty.
If the boss of the highest court in the land is allowed to justify not declaring his nest egg of foreign exchange, which he insists he accumulated of over 40 years of hard work, mostly in the private sector when the US dollar was as strong as P3.50 to $1, who is to say a filing clerk, an army colonel, mayor, governor, congressman or senator shouldn’t be given the same leeway?
And in the 25 years that the requirement of SALN filing has been in the Constitution and laws passed by Congress, who among them – elected or appointed – have been scrupulously following this standard of disclosure?
In yesterday’s final arguments, chief defense counsel Serafin Cuevas was asked by Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, what possible injury would arise if a public officer would voluntarily list in his SALN his foreign currency deposits.
Cuevas feeble reply: the “probability” of “kidnapping or extortion” befalling the honest servant in a country where peace and order “cannot be assured.”
If the Supreme Court’s no. 1 magistrate can’t rely on the pillars of justice to secure his life and fortune in this country, he’s working in the wrong institution. Instead of embodying the majesty of the rule of law, his lawyer suggests that he harbors a deep-seated fear that honesty would only get him into more trouble.
If Corona is complaining of feeling persecuted for being held to a higher standard than most, it’s a misplaced sense of pain – the high bar is where it should be.
No less is expected from the chief of the tribunal of last resort, whose verdicts have finality that cannot be overturned by any force of nature other than the vacillation of its own members.
For the past five months, citizens of a country whose majority live in poverty, have followed TV and radio coverage of the impeachment proceedings and listened to jaw-dropping accounts of personal wealth – real estate acquisitions, dollar accounts, multiple bank accounts.
It’s not an unfamiliar picture in the Philippines. The lives of the powerful in politics and government usually breed great wealth.
What’s not typical is exposing a member of this elite to a lengthy, public trial that measures his career and character on the basis of a single document, an ultimate test of personal honesty.
We saw a broken man take the witness stand and, on the verge of tears, plead for sympathy that his undeclared $2.4 million and P80 million in commingled funds were not an act of evasion from the truth to the degree that would make non-disclosure a culpable violation of the Constitution.
Strike a blow today against Corona, and Congress commits itself to a standard of honesty that should apply to its own members and the rest of the country’s public servants.