The judges are worse than the ‘criminal’

It now turns out that some of those who judged former Chief Justice Renato Corona in his impeachment trial at the Senate are themselves more corrupt—much, much more corrupt than he was.

Corona’s offense of filing an incorrect statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) —is very minor compared to some senator-judges who allegedly plundered the people’s coffers.

As the saying goes, a person living in a glass house shouldn’t throw stones.

How fast did karma come to the senators as well as to members of the House of Representatives which sent the impeachment complaint against Corona to the Senate for trial.

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If this were Japan, many of those whose names were mentioned on the list of alleged pork barrel scam queen Janet Lim-Napoles would have committed hara-kiri.

They would have disemboweled themselves with a katana or Japanese sword out of shame.

But this is not Japan. This is the Philippines where, it seems, being tagged corrupt is an honor.

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I’m disappointed with a legislator who was my friend when he was still an Army colonel during the last few years of the Marcos regime.

When I visited the colonel in his office in Camp Aguinaldo, he showed me an aquarium with several man-eating piranhas from the Amazon River.

Piranhas by the hundreds could turn a person into a skeleton in seconds.

This colonel had a name for each piranha.

“This is General So-and-So, and that’s General Blankety-Blank, and on the far side is General So-and-So,” said the colonel, an avowed hater of corruption in the military at that time.

The generals, after whom he named some of his piranhas, brought shame to the Armed Forces, the colonel said.

That was several months before the Edsa Revolution of 1986 where he played a big role.

This military officer-turned-legislator is on the Napoles list.

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Former Sen. Ping Lacson shouldn’t have meddled with the Napoles “list” since he has his hands full—supposedly—attending to the needs of the victims of Supertyphoon “Yolanda.”

Lacson, the rehabilitation czar of Eastern Visayas, could have handed the list over to another person and let the other person expose it.

Or, he could just have forgotten about the list since the guy who gave it to him, Janet’s husband Jimmy, didn’t sign it.

Of what use is a list that destroys other people’s reputations, especially those of Ping’s former colleagues, if it was not signed?

The lure of the TV camera and the sight of his name and pictures in the newspapers must have been too tempting for Ping to resist.

Remember, there are three, nay four, lists: Lacson’s; the one held by the “queen” of whistle-blowers, Sandra Cam; the one of Justice Secretary Leila de Lima.

The fourth list, of course, is the one of Inquirer provided by government state witness Benhur Luy.

Ping’s list is the most unreliable since it is unsigned or given by a person who himself was involved in many scams victimizing the government.

Jimmy Napoles, a former Marine major, was allegedly involved years ago in a deal supplying Kevlar helmets to the Philippine Marines. The helmets were later found inferior.