Dense and denser

Observers earnestly trying to make heads and tails of the trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona may conceivably be hampered by the apparent swings of the Senate impeachment court from what may be deemed quasilegal to what may be deemed strictly legal. From Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s early statement that the court take a liberal stance in accepting evidence –in the interest, she said, of the public that may consider nonacceptance of evidence as an act of suppression – observers now have to contend with the possibility that all evidence presented in connection with Corona’s bank accounts is “the fruit of the poisonous tree,” or inadmissible.

Santiago was quoted as telling reporters on Tuesday that all discussions resulting from the subpoena issued by Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile on Corona’s bank documents should be stricken off the record on the ground that these had “no basis.” At the impeachment trial itself, she engaged in a lengthy tirade against the prosecutors who, she indicated in another overdramatic performance, should be clapped in jail for their audacity to submit questionable documents to the court as basis for their requested subpoena. (Again, her termagant stance blurred a presentation of her otherwise sharp knowledge of the law and drew annoyingly indulgent smiles from those present as well as TV viewers.) But her demand that the discussions be expunged from the record is absolutist and worrisome, particularly because the bank accounts indicated in the documents have been confirmed by the president of Philippine Savings Bank, Pascual Garcia III, and have been found to contain amounts not declared in the Chief Justice’s statements of assets, liabilities and net worth. Is Santiago saying that all that evidence should be poured down the drain, as it were, on the basis of, for example, branch manager Annabelle Tiongson’s seemingly amused (or perhaps she is merely prone to nervous laughter) and rather vague claim that the submitted documents are “fake” and have “differences” with the original papers in her branch?

The temporary restraining order issued by the Supreme Court on the impeachment court’s inquiry into the foreign currency deposits of Corona has naturally added to the burden of earnest observers in trying to make sense of the already dense proceedings. (On Wednesday, after consulting with her lawyer, Tiongson balked at the impeachment court’s instruction that she produce the bank’s logbook, saying the signatures there concerned not only Corona’s peso deposits but his dollar deposits as well. As though in a black comedy, she, and later PSBank president Garcia himself, were ordered to produce the logbook and to cover the signatures pertaining to the dollar deposits.) The TRO may be based on the Foreign Currency Deposits Law, which states that no such deposit may be looked into without the owner’s written consent, but it is hardly surprising that the high court’s move is being perceived as an additional block to getting at the answer to the otherwise simple question of whether the Chief Justice is being less than truthful in his SALNs. Hardly surprising, too, is the question of why the majority of the Supreme Court justices would act thus in the face of the constitutional provision obligating government officials to truthfully disclose their wealth (or, necessarily, lack of it).

A dissenter, Associate Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, trenchantly noted that the majority did not even consider “higher values, such as public accountability,” as an exception to the privilege of absolute confidentiality, and that the TRO had succeeded in cultivating “an atmosphere of impunity.” (It bears noting that Sereno is one of two justices whom Corona sought to inhibit from participation in deliberations on his petition that the impeachment proceedings be stopped.)

A part of Sereno’s dissenting opinion provides stinging food for thought to balance the dense trial proceedings: “This contention [of the majority] pushes the law to an absurdity, as the adherence to this absolutist stance invites unscrupulous public officers to convert their peso deposits to foreign currency accounts in order to hide from the law and evade criminal liability.”