Woodmen please spare those trees

Both the defense and prosecution panels in the Corona impeachment trial are claiming early victories after one week of Senate hearings. The week had the clerk of court of the Supreme Court surrendering statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs) of Chief Justice Renato Corona to the impeachment court, and registers of deeds of Taguig, Quezon City and Marikina surrendering titles to properties belonging to the Corona family.

Despite the vigorous efforts of chief defense counsel Serafin Cuevas to block the presentation of these documents by citing technicalities, presiding officer Juan Ponce Enrile ordered their submission. An examination of the SALNs and the titles and deeds of absolute sale will readily reveal why Corona does not want his SALNs made public.

The defense said the submission of the SALNs disproves the charge in Article 2 of the impeachment complaint that Corona violated the Constitution and betrayed the public trust “when he failed to disclose his SALNs.” It said Article 2 did not allege Corona’s accumulation of ill-gotten wealth but only non-disclosure of his SALNs.

The prosecution, on the other hand, said that the documents show Corona had undervalued and misdeclared his and his family’s assets which jumped from P14.9 million in 2002 to P22 million in 2010. Even the defense lawyers lost their spunk when the registers of deeds read into the records the true value of the many properties of the Coronas.

One of the documents that came to light Thursday showed that Corona declared a property at the posh La Vista in Quezon City at only P3 million; it was actually bought for the staggering sum of P16 million. That’s an undervaluation of P13 million.

The registers of deeds also produced land and condominium titles that, when compared to Corona’s SALNs, tend to show that other properties were also drastically undervalued. There’s the swank 300-square-meter condo unit in Bellagio at The Fort which Corona valued in his SALN at only P6.8 million but, based on the deed of sale, was actually acquired for P14.5 million.

Another unit at The Ridge, also at The Fort, was declared by Corona in his SALN as worth only P2.3 million when it was bought for P9 million. A condo unit at The Burgundy in Quezon City was valued by Corona at only P921,000 but was said to have been bought for P2.5 million. A Columns condo unit in Makati was declared by Corona to be worth only P1.2 million when its actual purchase price was said to be P3.5 million.

And don’t forget that Corona has claimed only five real estate properties. The statement now appears to be a falsehood. Acting Marikina register of deeds Sedfrey Garcia testified that Corona’s wife Cristina alone owns eight properties in Marikina.

If I were to second-guess the thrust of the prosecution when the trial resumes tomorrow, it would be to determine whether the Corona children, to whom the spouses sold properties with a combined value of P13 million, really have the means to buy them. This would be as easy as going over the tax returns of the Corona children. BIR Commissioner Kim Henares has been summoned to testify on the tax returns. Without the means to buy the properties on their own, the only conclusion to be drawn in all these is that the children acted as dummies of the parents in an effort to hide the properties from scrutiny.

With the gravity of the pieces of evidence that have been presented against Corona so far, the technicality which Corona’s lawyers are raising to stop the evidence from being accepted by the impeachment court—the alleged lack of an ultimate fact asserted in Article 2—cannot be allowed to suppress the disclosure of the truth.

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While the attention of the nation is glued to the impeachment trial, the Department of Public Works and Highways is taking advantage of the distraction to set the stage for the “massacre” of 256 fully grown trees allegedly to allow the widening of the MacArthur Highway. An official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources said that more than 1,000 trees are along the highway. That means if we allow the cutting, more than 1,000 trees would be sacrificed. These trees are between 25 and 30 years old.

Environmentalists are protesting the planned massacre.

That’s not the end of it. In Central Luzon, the DPWH has applied for permits to cut trees on segments of the MacArthur Highway in Tarlac for the widening of the highway.

And in Baguio, the SM mall developer has been given permission by the DENR to transfer more than 100 pine trees from Luneta Hill, site of the old Pines Hotel. The reason: they are going to build a parking lot on the site. Can you beat that? More than a hundred fully grown pine trees—trees that cleanse the air of pollutants that they replace with oxygen—would be killed to give way to a parking lot for vehicles that pollute the air.

Instead of cutting pine trees, Baguio should plant more of them. What is Baguio without the pine trees? They are the trademark of the City of Pines. But many tourists are disappointed that pine trees are disappearing in Baguio to give way to commercial buildings and residences. Pine trees are what gives beauty to the Summer Capital. They are what gives Baguio that fragrant pine smell that vacationists love. I think logging companies are still decimating the pine trees in upper Benguet and in the surrounding mountains. The Baguio City government and the provincial governments in the Cordilleras should pass laws and ordinances that strictly prohibit the cutting of pine trees and instead encourage the planting of more of them.