Belmonte: Corona deserves nothing but conviction

House Speaker Sonny Belmonte at the impeachment court. PHOTO BY RICHARD A. REYES

Chief Justice Renato Corona, the judiciary’s highest official who “bends justice to hide his crime,” deserves nothing but conviction, Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said Monday.

At the conclusion of the trial, Belmonte ended the prosecution’s closing arguments with a plea to the 23 senators to look at Corona’s character and find him guilty.

“Your honors, I ask that you see through the character of Renato Corona and reflect whether this is the man that we want as our Chief Justice, the head of the entire judicial system, for the next six years,” Belmonte said in a 10-minute speech.

“And I ask that you vote according to conscience, and evidence, and find Chief Justice Renato Corona guilty.”

Belmonte said Corona himself admitted to amassing $2.4 million and P80 million, but did not report these huge amounts in his statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs).

And for this omission, the Chief Justice offered only “glib excuses,” such as the confidentiality of the dollar accounts, and the fact that peso accounts were commingled funds, he said.

“Your honors, this impeached Chief Justice effectively wants to be exempted from the SALN law,” Belmonte said. “He has not been declaring his true net worth through the many years that he has been in public service. And yet he himself concurred in Supreme Court decisions wherein lowly public servants were dismissed from public office because they did not declare their true net worth.”

Obviously, Corona wanted the court and the public “to ignore his millions of dollars and the pesos undeclared in his SALN,” he said. “My question is, why? Is he prohibited from disclosing them in his SALN? Shouldn’t he be the one to set a good example?” he said.

“Isn’t it disturbing your honors that the judiciary’s highest official, the last bastion of justice for uniform application of laws over the land is himself the very culprit who is bending justice, so to speak, to hide his crime? Our people will not allow that, your honors,” he said.

The Speaker, one of the 188 lawmakers who signed the impeachment complaint, said the prosecution had proven Corona’s partiality when, based on a letter, “engineered” a ruling adverse to the Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines.

The panel also proved that he was “willing to tip the scales of justice with his own hands when it comes” to former President and Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, he added.

“When Mr. Corona handed down a TRO effectively allowing Mrs. Arroyo to leave the country, the nation uttered a collective cry of outrage because the very spirit of public accountability was coming under attack—by no less than the Chief Justice, the highest embodiment of justice in the land,” Belmonte said.

What was at stake at the trial was the “principle that those who do wrong will be held accountable” by the institutions set up by the people, Belmonte said.  After all, the trial was conducted in “search of the truth.”

At a news conference called after the proceedings, the chief House prosecutor, Representative Niel Tupas Jr. of Iloilo, said the prosecution decided to give Belmonte a role in the closing arguments to show the unity of the House members who signed the impeachment complaint against Corona.  With a report from Cynthia D. Balana