100 too many

That the prosecutors in Chief Justice Renato Corona’s impeachment trial intend to call some 100 witnesses to testify is not funny, and as though to prove it, no one’s laughing. Or maybe there are a number out there showing teeth, but in a grimace, or a smirk, or even a sneer. Do the prosecutors sincerely think that the public is prepared to dally with this issue till kingdom come? If they do, then they fail to read the prevailing mood.

And the mood is that the prosecutors should wrap up their case, particularly Article 2, as swiftly as they can, refine their strategy, and marshal their courtroom skills in the face of the defense’s clever performance. Certainly they can’t afford another surprise like that sprung on Tuesday by their own supposed key witness on the matter of the special price given to the Corona spouses for the 303-square-meter penthouse condominium at the posh The Bellagio, which surprise unfortunately served, from the legal perspective, to defuse the “P10-million discount” bomb.

Time is a major enemy, and the prosecutors’ submission of the 100-witnesses list comes across as an act of folly. That public opinion is crucial in an impeachment trial is acknowledged by the contending camps; flagging public attention as a result of the sheer tediousness of listening to a long procession of witnesses testify (often in fits and starts, courtesy of the credibility-compromised Serafin Cuevas’ persistent invoking of the letter of the law) is therefore not to be wished.

To be sure, one could say that the prosecution has been driven to extreme measures. Its spokesperson, Marikina Rep. Romero Quimbo, suggested as much last week when he said that the idea was to inundate the senator-judges with such testimonial and documentary evidence as to ensure Corona’s conviction of betrayal of public trust, violation of the Constitution and graft and corruption. The point being, he indicated, that the lengthy list would not have been drawn up and submitted to the impeachment court had not the defense been “so technical in its objections” to the prosecution’s evidence.

But the prosecution’s frustrations (and the defense’s skillful maneuvers) aside, in less than two weeks the impeachment trial has succeeded in presenting to the public a picture of a Chief Justice who has been less than forthright in accomplishing his statements of assets, liabilities and net worth, as shown by the omission of certain properties and the undervaluation of others in the documents, and ethically lacking in receiving a not inconsiderable discount in at least one property purchase. Is that par for the course (as suggested by parties who intone that only those who have been truly honest in their SALN declarations may cast the first stone)? We think not, because the position Corona holds is so lofty, so sacrosanct, as to demand the most stringent behavior. Yet, imagine the primus inter pares of the judiciary, as Corona once described himself (in the process boldly challenging Malacañang to look up the meaning of the phrase in case it did not know), behaving like some shady government functionary in committing sins of omission in the accomplishment of the required documents.

Does the public actually need the testimony of representatives of Megaworld Corp., Ayala Land Inc., Community Innovations Inc., Burgundy Realty Corp., John Hay Management Corp., Housing Land Use Regulatory Board, Filinvest Alabang Inc., Philippine National Bank, Land Bank of the Philippines, and the majority of the others named in the prosecution’s 100-witness list? Is the prosecution still required to go through the paces of presenting them and being blocked at every turn by a defense panel that continues to behave as though the matter at bar were a criminal case?

The answer should be clear by now: Only if the public still has to be convinced that the Chief Justice’s moral fitness to remain in his post is questionable at best. And that whether the senator-judges vote to acquit or convict him, Corona has become damaged goods.