Questions about Corona nomination

I congratulate journalist Raissa Robles for the painstaking research behind what she puts in her blog, raissarobles.com. I wish more journalists would follow in her footsteps instead of taking the easy (and reportedly more lucrative) path of basing their news reports on what are clearly press releases from interested parties (as indicated by the fact that different newspapers carry similarly written reports lifted from the same source).

She has categorically denied (a) being the “small lady” described by a congressman as the source of the Philippine Savings Bank account numbers and (b) even knowing Justice Antonio Carpio, much less being his “girl Friday.” These are the “facts” that went the rounds through text messages. With the latest spin doing the rounds claiming that she was positively identified through the tapes of the CCTV cameras which are deployed in various areas of the Senate. Whoever blasted those messages through SMS and the Internet may have made it easy to be identified. All one really has to do is ask the question: Who would want to kill two birds (Raissa and Carpio) with one stone?

One piece of Raissa’s work that fascinated me was her digging up the stories associated with the nomination of Renato C. Corona as a justice of the Supreme Court in 2001. Two points she made that are noteworthy: the first was that Corona’s nomination was formally opposed by his wife’s uncle, Jose Ma. Basa III, who wrote a letter to the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) even in 1997 when Corona was first nominated to the Supreme Court (a copy of which Raissa reproduces), and apparently again in 2001—it is not clear whether it was the same letter.

Said Basa (now deceased), who also identified himself as a  KCR—which I think stands for Knight Commander of Rizal—of the Order of the Knights of Rizal: “I believe that if Mr. Corona will be appointed as Supreme Court Justice, he will not be capable of rendering fair and just decisions as he has not exhibited such character. And so, I strongly oppose his nomination.”

A second point Raissa made was that then Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano and Sen. Francis Pangilinan were, in 2001, members of the JBC, which is mandated to present to the President of the Philippines, among other people, a short list of nominees to the Supreme Court from which the President is to choose. Cayetano, because he was chair of the House committee on justice, and Pangilinan as his Senate counterpart.

Per the Robles report, the JBC not only disregarded the Basa letter, but also “unanimously approved Corona’s nomination in 2002, even placing Corona first on the JBC list of nominees”  (emphasis mine). Which means of course that Cayetano and Pangilinan, who are now senator-judges in Corona’s impeachment trial, must have thought then that Corona was the cat’s meow.

Of course, that was 11 years ago, when both Cayetano and Pangilinan were very much allied with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Arroyo had put herself squarely behind Corona on the issue, and Raissa quotes then presidential spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao as saying “The President is fully confident on the moral integrity of Corona. He would not be a Cabinet member, much less a Cabinet member in Malacañang, as chief of staff if the President did not have full trust in his integrity.”

Which brings us to the question: How could the JBC—in 2002—have such supreme confidence in Corona’s qualifications to be a Supreme Court justice, that he was their unanimous No. 1 choice? Did Corona at the time exhibit to the JBC’s satisfaction that he was a person of “proper competence, integrity, probity and independence” and/or “a proven high sense of morality and probity”?

I would dearly like to ask Senators Cayetano and Pangilinan whether the possibility that Corona might be protective of his former boss (there goes independence) or the possibility that his uncle-in-law’s letter might have basis (there goes everything else) even crossed their minds. And if these did cross their minds, what made them choose him anyway?

In other words, is it possible that the JBC failed to “insulate the nomination process from undue influence of any kind,” or failed to keep itself “unfettered by the shackles of friendship, relationship, or other considerations”? All these from the JBC’s vision statements. More graphically, did a lot of brown-nosing take place?

I bring these up again (the first time I wrote about the JBC was eight months ago) because if, say, Corona is convicted by the impeachment court, what assurance do the Filipino people have that the JBC will do its job properly this time? None. Why?

Theoretically, the 1987 Constitution made sure that the JBC would be dominated by non-partisan appointees, because its composition would have three ex-officio members (Supreme Court chief justice as chair, the justice secretary and one member from Congress), and four “regular” members, all having to pass through the Commission on Appointments, theoretically representing the top of the legal profession: one from the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, one from the legal academe, one from the legal private sector, and one a retired Supreme Court justice.

That’s the theory. What we have now is two members from Congress rather than one, who each have one full vote, rather than the one-half each that they started out with. Which means that the “regular members” are no longer in the majority. More politics.

Worse, there is doubt about the competence of the regular members themselves, with the exception of Aurora Lagman, whose credentials are above reproach.

That’s why.