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If attentive observers of the developments at the Senate impeachment court are appalled to discover that Chief Justice Renato Corona and his wife enjoyed VIP perks from Philippine Airlines while the company had a case pending at the Supreme Court, and are naturally eager to learn more, what are they to make of a ruling by the court rejecting the PAL executive presented by the prosecution to testify on the matter? Would they not be wondering why someone who can credibly be described as a competent witness would be deemed irrelevant to the case?
Posted: February 22nd, 2012 in Editor's Pick,Editorial | Read More »
So, are those Philippine Savings Bank documents really fake? Annabelle Tiongson, the PSBank Katipunan branch manager who shook the impeachment court days ago by claiming that papers relating to Chief Justice Renato Corona’s deposits that the prosecution had submitted to the court were fraudulent, has lately qualified her statements a bit. It “seems fake,” she said at one point during her appearance last Monday. “In banking parlance, if it’s different from the original, it’s fake,” she hedged at another.
Posted: February 21st, 2012 in Editor's Pick,Editorial,Inquirer Opinion | Read More »
Chief Justice Renato Corona has made it fairly obvious that he will not oblige his enemies by going quietly. Since his first surly speech before his supporters at the Supreme Court compound before his impeachment trial began, he has displayed a startling inelegance that, while not a high crime, is unbecoming a member of the Supreme Court, much less the top magistrate of the land. The language, the belligerent pose, suggests that he has lost grasp of the loftiness of the post he holds and the deportment attendant to it.
Posted: February 20th, 2012 in Editor's Pick,Editorial | Read More »
Perhaps unwittingly, the Senate impeachment trial has shown more and more the urgent need to amend the country’s bank secrecy laws and make them dovetail with current global paradigm shift from secrecy to transparency and accountability. The shift has been provoked by the 2008 global financial crisis in which banking secrecy hampered attempts to crack down on profiteers and implement reforms, even as in the Philippines, antiquated and very strict bank secrecy laws abetted corruption and made of the banking system a safe haven for ill-gotten wealth.
Posted: February 20th, 2012 in Editor's Pick,Editorial,Inquirer Opinion | Read More »
Does the fact that the Constitution makes the Senate “the sole judge of all impeachment cases’ make it superior to the Supreme Court in everything relating to impeachment?”
Posted: February 18th, 2012 in Editor's Pick,Editorial,Featured Columns,Featured Headline,Inquirer Opinion | Read More »
Three weeks into the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, as more evidence of enormous sums of money in the Chief Justice’s name across various bank accounts has come to light despite the yeoman efforts of his defense team to prevent their disclosure, Corona’s lawyers have repeatedly assured the public that there is nothing irregular about these huge amounts, that some rational explanation is forthcoming about their glaring non-inclusion in Corona’s SALNs, and that everyone should be patient because that definitive explanation—along with the contents of Corona’s dollar accounts which have been sealed by a Supreme Court TRO—will be presented to the public “in due course.” No specific date so far as to when that due course is, but Corona’s lawyers say that, other than being patient, the country needs to trust them at their word.
Posted: February 17th, 2012 in Editor's Pick,Editorial,Featured Columns,Featured Headline,Inquirer Opinion | Read More »
Just about the one bright spot for Philippine diplomacy would be its policy toward Burma, compelling Rangoon all these years to release Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, to democratize, and to live up to the commitments it had made when it joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in 1997.
Posted: February 16th, 2012 in Columnists,Editor's Pick,Editorial | Read More »
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.
Posted: February 15th, 2012 in Editor's Pick,Editorial | Read More »
After some two weeks of fire and fury at the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, the outlines of a central narrative have emerged, one quite apart from the matter of the evidence itself, which remains incomplete, even if the bits and pieces that have dribbled out so far have roused millions of observers across the country into seesawing throes of instant judgment from day to day. No, what has fast coalesced in the public mind concerns the two opposing platoons of legal minds that constitute the prosecution and defense panels – the first said to be a bunch of inept, callow cubs as personified by the often tongue-tied Iloilo Rep. Niel Tupas Jr., the other a brilliant coterie of veteran counsels led by that quick-witted lion, former Supreme Court Justice Serafin Cuevas.
Posted: February 14th, 2012 in Editor's Pick,Editorial,Inquirer Opinion | Read More »
Last week fellow “cavaliers” of dismissed Maj. Gen. Carlos F. Garcia in the Philippine Military Academy disowned him eight years after the scandal broke concerning his illegally acquired wealth and his family’s extravagant lifestyle, saying he had tarnished the image of the military.
Posted: February 13th, 2012 in Editor's Pick,Editorial | Read More »
Fugitive retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan was adding insult to injury when he made his lawyer, Jesus Santos, write the National Bureau of Investigation to say that University of the Philippines students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño were still alive. The students have been missing since 2006 and Palparan, who has gone into hiding rather than face the kidnapping case filed against him by the Department of Justice, is trifling with the emotions of the grieving parents who have been looking for them. The parents, through their lawyer Edre Olalia, have dared Palparan to face them. He should be man enough to accept the challenge.
Posted: February 13th, 2012 in Editor's Pick,Editorial,Inquirer Opinion | Read More »
With one motion, we are brought to the brink of bedlam. When the defense lawyers of Chief Justice Renato Corona filed a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court to halt the ongoing impeachment trial at the Senate, it also brought the Philippines the closest it has ever been to a constitutional crisis.
Posted: February 12th, 2012 in Editor's Pick,Editorial,Featured Columns,Featured Headline,Inquirer Opinion | Read More »
