Aquino won’t stop attacks on Corona

President Benigno Aquino III. INQUIRER PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

BALER, Aurora—President Benigno Aquino III is not about to declare a ceasefire in his word war with impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona despite pleas from senators for the heads of two coequal branches of government to restrain themselves.

Mr. Aquino on Sunday stepped up his attacks on Corona as Senator Edgardo Angara, one of the judges in Corona’s impeachment trial, sat a few meters away.

The President said his verbal attacks were not directed at the Chief Justice but at “the system” for which Corona was “the face” that the administration was fighting against.

“To keep quiet about the whole thing is, I think, wrong,” he told reporters in response to calls by some senator-judges for him and Corona to stop their word war and to just let the Senate impeachment court do its job.

Attending the 33rd founding anniversary of the province and the commemoration of the 124th birth anniversary of Doña Aurora Aragon-Quezon, the President said he would continue to voice out his thoughts on Corona “if needed.”

He led the wreath-laying rites on the statue of Doña Aurora and later inaugurated Aurora Medical Hospital.

Senator Angara thanked Mr. Aquino for accepting the invitation to attend the celebrations. “We remember acts of kindness and gratitude. We will never forget this,” he told the President during a program held on the capitol grounds.

On Thursday, at a meeting with students from various colleges and universities at La Consolacion College in Manila, Mr. Aquino said Corona’s failure to declare his multimillion-peso bank accounts was sufficient basis to remove him from office.

The President said Corona should be held to account using the same standards that caused a court interpreter to lose her job in 1997 for not declaring ownership of a stall in a public market.

Responding to Mr. Aquino’s attacks, Corona challenged the President to disclose his financial and psychological records. “We have an obligation to the people that we are of sound mind,” the Chief Justice said in a statement.

Punish offenders

In a speech here, Mr. Aquino said his mandate was to provide the people with a government that places priority on justice and accountability.

This meant that those who committed offenses must be punished and those who did good things should be rewarded, he said. “This is what triggered the trial in the Senate of Renato Corona,” Mr. Aquino said in Filipino.

The President told Aurora residents that they must be proud of Baler Representative Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara, a son of the senator and one of the deputy spokespersons of the House prosecution panel in the impeachment trial “for clarifying issues.”

Mr. Aquino said he had faith in the “fairness” of Senator Angara and the “entire Senate.”

The impeachment trial, the President said, had a “simple” aim—to come up with the truth as “the key to establishing a society where the people are accountable.”

Simple arithmetic

“How can we have confidence that every centavo of our taxes will go to good use if you have a member in government who doesn’t understand simple arithmetic?” he said, referring to the Chief Justice and the discrepancies in Corona’s statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs) found during the trial.

Taking note of the statement of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, the presiding judge in the trial, that a SALN was one’s “personal balance sheet,” Mr. Aquino said: “What you have sworn (into your SALN) is what you really own.”

Keeping quiet wrong

To reporters later, the President said he would not keep his peace when it came to speaking about Corona.

“I think I am within my rights to express my opinion, especially as I believe I speak for a sizeable number of our people,” he said, adding that this was “the essence of democracy.”

“A democracy is the majority deciding for everybody and you cannot decide properly if there is no discourse within the contending sides in any issue,” he said.

Mr. Aquino said that keeping quiet was wrong. “From time to time, I reserve my right to be able to say what I believe should be said to the people.”

The President also made clear that he did not respond to Corona’s “scurrilous attacks” on him.

Response to Corona challenge

Mr. Aquino said his criticisms against Corona were “not directed (at him) personally but at the system of which he is the personification.”

“He is the face of what we are fighting for to fix the judiciary,” the President said.

Asked about Corona’s call for him to open his SALN and even his psychological records, the President first addressed questions on his SALN which, he said, had always been brought out in the open since he was still a member of Congress—first as a congressman and later as a senator.

While the media would include him among the “notables” in their SALN stories, the President said he was never on the list of lawmakers with the highest, median or lowest income.

“So what will have to be opened? … If he is not reading the papers, watching television or listening to the radio, then that’s not my fault. He has enough resources to buy newspapers or watch television,” the President said of Corona.

He said he never placed his SALN in a “locked filing cabinet” or a “vault,” an apparent dig at Corona, who produced his SALNs only at the impeachment trial. One of the eight articles of impeachment against Corona is his failure to disclose his SALN.

Psychological evaluation

Dismissing the psychological records as an attack that was made against him since he ran for president in 2010, Mr. Aquino acknowledged that anyone who would be attacked this way, would not find it nice.

He said his detractors during the election campaign claimed that a priest had done a psychological evaluation on him but the Jesuit denied he had not done so because he had no capability of doing one.

“So my detractors changed their story. They got a professor of psychology in Ateneo where I came from—who is quite elderly and where there are some days he is fine and days where his age shows. So as I could not refute the charges. But they chanced upon him when he was fine and he said he did not come up with such a report,” the President said.

In the third attempt to discredit him, his detractors tried to get a doctor who knew his family when they were living in Boston, Mr. Aquino said. But by the time the story came out, the doctor was already dead “as if to make sure that they would not be contradicted,” he said.

To those in the media who “dignify this kind of stories, how many times do we need to repeat these answers?” he said, “Sorry, that’s how far I will go (on this issue).”

Mr. Aquino’s spokesperson, Edwin Lacierda, defended the President’s persistent attacks on Corona. “Essential in democracy is the right of every citizen, high and low, to express his opinion,” Lacierda said.

“The President firmly believes he has the right to inform the citizenry of the real issues of the impeachment trial, uncluttered by technicalities and peripheral issues,” Lacierda said in a text message to the Philippine Daily Inquirer when asked why the President engages Corona on this when he can influence people, including senator-judges.

“He has maintained a high level of public discourse and he will continue to engage the public as he deems fit,” the official said.

Originally posted: 3:47 pm | Sunday, February 19th, 2012