Revilla’s guilty vote for Corona disappoints Lakas-CMD

House Minority Leader Danilo Suarez. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — It seems that Senator Ramon Revilla Jr. stand on convicting former Chief Justice Renato Corona was not shared by Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats party-list, its chairman House minority leader Danilo Suarez said on Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters during a briefing at the House of Representatives, Suarez maintained that the senator-judge’s “guilty” verdict on the former chief magistrate was “not the position of Lakas. [We’re opposed to the process of the] impeachment. We have our own judgement call whether it is fair or right.”

Suarez said that he spoke with Revilla and Leyte Representative Ferdinand Martin Romualdez from Monday night until Tuesday and saw the senator-judge’s decision to vote for conviction to have been a difficult one.

He said that Lakas-CMD and the minority bloc’s opposition to the prosecution team’s methods in carrying out the impeachment process did not mean support for Corona’s acquittal.

But the lawmaker reasoned that if the process was flawed, the former chief magistrate should not have been removed from office.

Zambales Representative Milagros “Mitos” Magsaysay said that the minority bloc was “particularly concerned by the observations of some of the senator-judges regarding the non-observance of due process, admission of unauthenticated evidence, media leaks to condition the minds of the public.”

But she said that they would “yield” to the Senate impeachment court’s decision to remove Corona from the Supreme Court and urged the Aquino administration to “pursue with the same vigor and passion to all erring public officials and not only those who have opposing views.”