If we are to gauge things from the advocacies that individuals and groups devote to reform of institutions and public agencies, one would be shocked at the utter lack of initiatives for reform in the Judiciary. This gives the impression that there is little or no concern about the state of affairs in this very important branch of government, presumably because there is no cause for alarm.
In contrast, the Executive and Legislative branches of government have been perennial targets of not only criticism but reform initiatives as well. The most known and persistent advocacy is popularly known as “good governance.” Every election, and often in-between, the cry of the opposition, justified or magnified, is good governance, meaning that the incumbent is unable to govern well.
Electoral campaigns themselves allow the people to hear the criticisms and accusations in a hyped manner, often overdoing what media does on a daily basis. Beyond that, elections allow the people to get rid of unwanted public officials – or install new ones who bear new hope of a better tomorrow. Because of elections, the most criticized public officials are changed without the need of impeachments.
What about the Judiciary? The current impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona is not only about the highest symbol of law and justice, it is also about to open Pandora’s Box. The Chief Justice is not any better, or worse, than the collective Supreme Court, the collective Court of Appeals, and the lower courts all over the land. Despite the often rabid public statements of support being given by many judges in the Judiciary, there is an awful silence about how ideal a model Corona is, how so much of an example he is of propriety and probity, how inspiring his public and private life is to citizens in search of leaders who show the best way.
The defense of Corona is almost totally based on the claimed inability of the prosecution to prove its case, or the superior technical abilities of the lawyers who defend him. They do not talk about the utter innocence of a man unjustly accused. Rather, they allege there is no proof beyond legal doubt that violations have been committed. By technicality, impropriety is not an impeachable offense even though it is a fundamental requirement of any public office. Remember the phrase, “… of good moral character… ”?
Being someone of not good moral character is not about law but about compliance to a value system that asks more from public officials before they are even allowed to be appointed. And Chief Justice Renato Corona was appointed. By Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as a president whose term was ending in a matter of weeks, against all expectations of the spirit of the law behind midnight appointments. And to think that it had to take a bizarre interpretation of the majority of her own appointees to make a midnight appointment not really so.
The majority of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court penned a decision to favor not just Corona but Gloria herself. The Supreme Court did not tell Gloria to appoint Corona; it was Gloria who appointed Corona and asked the Supreme Court to see it her way, to see midnight as mid-afternoon. The first public impropriety was that of the Supreme Court when they favored one man against one Constitutional provision.
The greater impropriety was that of Corona. He cannot claim that he inhibited himself in the voting of whether midnight was not midnight. It is so debasing to the intelligence of the Filipino public to make them believe that there is no other relationship or transaction that can happen outside of the actual voting process. Corona accepted the unacceptable. He accepted the change of definition of the meaning of midnight. By accepting the unacceptable, it was tantamount to affirming the majority definition, the majority vote. Corona could have declined and then made an honorable man of himself, a man for others.
What is he now? He is an embattled Chief Justice who was judged not credible, not trustworthy, by the majority of the public even before the trial – this despite the vociferous actuation of judges and lawyers who took his side. Corona carries the burden of association with a former president who might yet be the third Philippine president making it to Guinness Book of Records as among the world’s greatest thieves. He carries the burden of being seen as her way out of the cases she had anticipated to be filed against her after her term. It is a heavy burden to carry when he today stands accused of benefiting illegally from his position. His SALN is spotty, suspect and exudes a bad odor. Now, he tries his best not to allow his bank statements to be examined. Another bad move on top of a bad association.
The impeachment and guilty verdict for Corona is not victory for me, it is only a step towards the victory that really matters – the reform of the Judiciary and the return to honor, finer morality and higher ethics of those who practice inside or beside the Judiciary. The final impeachment and removal of a Chief Justice may be sensational, but the Pandora’s Box made up of lawyers, judges and justices is the greatest blessing to a race and a motherland.
It is not law that sets the standards of morals and ethics, it is morals and ethics that create laws benefitting the common good. It is not law that defines justice, it is justice that demands law to follow and ensure it. For too long, we have allowed the law to play calisthenics and acrobatics with justice and fairness. In the process, the Filipino people have lost almost all faith in lawyers, judges and justices – in the very system that is the guarantee of their innocence and, more than that, their well-being.
I did not begin my attention and writing about the impeachment trial to condemn Corona. I did so hoping that the focus of public interest in it would provoke the nobler part of the Judiciary and the legal profession to rise above the din. I was wrong. The trial so far just points to the flaws, not of legal arguments, but of the human beings entrusted to deliver in graphic and inspiring ways the true spirit and sense of justice.