Fairness and impartiality

When our senators perform the task of judges in an impeachment case, they are not meeting as a legislative body; their function is not to make laws but to perform their constitutional mandate as “the sole power to try and decide all cases of impeachment.” Such function could be compared to the work of the members of Congress when they convene as a National Board of Canvassers (NBC)—to count the votes cast for the candidates for president and vice president.

Amid some calls for senator-judges to be fair and impartial in the ongoing impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, the sterling separate opinion of former Chief Justice Reynato Puno, in a case that involved the canvass of votes in the 2004 election of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, is very pertinent and appropriate. Perceived by some political observers that the 2004 NBC, then headed by Senate President Franklin Drilon and Majority Floor Leader Francis Pangilinan, was biased and partisan in favor of Arroyo, Puno reminded the legislators that the canvass of the votes should “not be done in a robotic manner” since the laws and the rules “look upon them not as unthinking slot machines when conducting the canvass.”

Puno clarified that the NBC is “not meeting as a lawmaking body,” hence, the legislators should discharge their function “with fairness and impartiality” to come up with an “informed and intelligent judgment.” In other words, Puno said, “lawmakers, when canvassing votes, should keep their eyes open but should shut them off to any political light.”

And so it should be in the impeachment case against Corona. Its trial should not be conducted in a “robotic manner.” The senators sitting as judges are not meeting as lawmakers but to determine the guilt or innocence of the impeached Chief Justice. Thus, paraphrasing the scholarly views of Puno, our senator-judges are called upon to exercise their discretion with fairness and impartiality to the end that an intelligent judgment is arrived at with full assurance that the constitutional rights of the impeached official are observed and protected. These constitutional rights are not suspended during the impeachment trial.

—ROMULO B. MACALINTAL,

independent analyst,

Corona Impeachment Trial, Las Piñas City