A whiff of danger

Weep like a  woman for what you could not defend as a man,”  the mother told  Boabdil  as the Muslim caliph wept  over  the besieged  city of  Granada,  before  fleeing to North Africa in 1483. “Llora  como mujer  lo que no has sabido defender como hombre.”

Christian armies  earlier  reconquered Toledo, Sevilla and Cordoba. In the Iberian Peninsula, the caliphate shriveled  into a perimeter around Granada, then collapsed.

“Walang iiyak!  Walang iiyak,”  demonstrators chanted. (“No crying!  No crying!”) Most  protesters were  from Iglesia ni Cristo,  Inquirer reported. They lofted  identically  printed  placards. “Salamat,”  the tear-choked  Corona responded.

Rewind to  March 2011. The Lower House justice committee chair flayed INC officials for covertly  badgering  to gut House Resolution 1089. That’d  give Ombudsman  Merceditas Gutierrez an escape hatch, claimed Rep. Niel Tupas Jr. Rather than run the impeachment gauntlet, Gutierrez  resigned.

In mid-December,  Corona vowed from  the Supreme Court’s  lobby  steps he’d meet impeachment head-on. Wife Cristina  and children beamed at his side. “CJ, CJ, CJ,” chanted  black ribbon festooned  court employees, who shut  down Manila courts for the day.  Reporters tallied  56  bursts of applause.

President Benigno Aquino III would  install “a puppet” in his place. Impeachment was an attack on the judiciary, Corona charged. He  mocked Aquino’s stance as “baluktot na daang matuwid” (crooked righteous path). He wouldn’t buckle, as did  Gutierrez.

Two weeks into the bruising trail, Corona   asked  the Supreme Court:  issue  a temporary restraining  order to stop  the  impeachment.  The  proceedings were  “null and  void” from the start. He’d  been denied due process. Articles of Impeachment  were transmitted without notice or  preliminary hearing. The court abused its discretion by issuing subpoenas for the chief  justice’s bank accounts.

“This is not an act of desperation … or  disrespect,”  the defense panel asserted.  “The defense is like a mouse pushed into a corner.” No recourse is left but to bring the issue outside of the impeachment body. Slamming brakes on  impeachment  enables  Corona  to protect his constitutional rights.

“That’d  be acquittal by TRO,” snapped Rep. Sonny Angara. “The Corona petition is almost  the  white flag—almost,” University of the Philippines College of Law’s Theodore Te noted. “The due process clause covers  life, liberty and property, not public office.  Is it ethical for a sitting Chief Justice to ask for relief from the very Court he leads and from which he has not taken leave?”

Corona  has many admirable  talents. But  is that honed ethical sense that Filipinos call delicadeza  one of  this?  Doubts  surged since his acceptance of a midnight appointment  from then president Gloria Macapagal  Arroyo.  Gloria who? The 14th President of the Philippines Remember?

A  half  month of acrimonious hearings, meanwhile, pried open a Pandora’s box. Contents caromed from glitzy condos, like Bellagio and the Columns to gap-studded Statements of Assets, Liablities and Net Worth for seven years. Over P31.7  million, stashed in PSB  and BPI accounts, were  partially reported  in SALNs.

By a vote of 8-5, the High Court stopped Thursday the Senate impeachment court from  compelling  the Philippine Savings Bank  to disclose  Corona ’s dollar accounts. The prosecution claims Corona stashed with PSBank Katipunan branch over $700,000. That remains a claim.

“It is not a crime to have a dollar account,” the defense  bristled. Of course not, replied  Sen. Serge Osmeña, chair of the  Senate committee on banks. The question  for the  impeachment court, however, is  where the dollars, if any, came from?  So far, the prosecution’s documents on  dollar accounts of  Corona  seem “admissible evidence,” Sen. Francis  Escudero claims

Open your dollar accounts voluntarily to the public, suggested  President  Aquino. “We are public servants,” Aquino said in Taguig City. “Public trust is part of it … Open the account  to show you’re  not hiding anything.”

“One of the exceptions in the Bank Secrecy is in cases of impeachment,” Inquirer’s Raul Pangalangan pointed out.  “[N]ondisclosure of information … is still the general rule. The subpoenas are exclusively for  the impeachment proceedings. To use a metaphor from the Erap impeachment, the second envelope must be opened.”

In the Corona impeachment,  no dollar accounts will be opened anytime soon. The  defense, in fact, ratcheted  the ante.

Malacañang dangled P100 million for every senator judge who’d buck the TRO, the defense  claimed. They refused  to reveal  their  sources. “Up to the informant to decide whether to come out.”

The  impeachment trial  “deteriorated into an inquisition,” Corona charged in an Ateneo Law  School  address over the weekend.  “Some senator-judges  have taken on the role of prosecuctors.”  There is a  “well-funded media campaigns besmirch” his name.

Is  the defense laying  the groundwork for a walkout of the defense from the  trial, wondered  Deputy Speaker Lorenzo “Erin” Tañada.  A walkout by prosecutors on Jan. 16, 2001, sealed  the second envelop  in  the Estrada impeachment. Can a walkout by defense lawyers weld shut  Corona’s dollar deposits for  good?

And how  do the Impeachment and Supreme Court inch  back from  the  brink? The scent of danger hangs heavy in the air.