Pressure on witness

The defense panel presented a maverick congressman, Rep. Tobias Tiangco of Navotas, as its first witness last Monday when the Senate impeachment court resumed hearings that gave Chief Justice Renato Corona his day in court.

Tiangco, who didn’t sign the impeachment complaint that 188 other congressmen dispatched with indecent haste to the Senate last Dec. 12 for trial, testified on the extraordinary pressures brought to bear on him by his colleagues to join them in the bandwagon effort to unseat Corona from his lofty position in the Supreme Court.

In acting as witness for the defense, Tiangco not only broke ranks with the House majority composed of allies of President Aquino, who has now subjugated the lower chamber of Congress, a supposedly independent and coequal branch of the Philippine government. He also served notice of his independence and exposed himself to political retaliation from a vindictive President who is determined to oust Corona, as well as to disciplinary action by the President’s subordinated cohorts in the House.

Tiangco testified at the impeachment court on how the House majority allegedly pressured its members into signing the impeachment complaint. But Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, presiding officer of the impeachment court, pronounced Tiangco’s testimony irrelevant to the trial of the Chief Justice.

What’s important to the court, Enrile said, is that Corona should address his failure to disclose to the public his statements of assets, liabilities and net worth. Enrile said that while he understood that Tiangco’s testimony was meant to show that some congressmen were pressured into signing the complaint, the important question that must be answered was whether or not the Chief Justice had committed any wrongdoing.  Some senator-judges said that Tiangco’s testimony “only affects the preparation of the articles of impeachment,” and that the issues raised by him were internal to the House. “How the House conducts its own business is its own lookout,”  Sen. Edgardo Angara said. “We’re not going to be my brother’s keeper.”

Despite the senator-judges’ rejection of Tiangco’s testimony as evidence of whether Corona had broken the law, as alleged in the articles of impeachment, the testimony did serve to inform the public of the controversial procedures of the House concerning the signing of the impeachment complaint and its transmittal to the Senate. In particular, the testimony illustrated how the House leadership put pressure on Tiangco to sign the complaint, which he eventually did not.

Tiangco said the release of the congressmen’s pork barrel, the priority development assistance fund (PDAF), was a pressure point for Malacañang intervention.

According to Tiangco, a first-term congressman, the House led by Speaker Feliciano Belmonte cooked up the impeachment complaint during a majority caucus on Dec. 12, the same day Corona was impeached. Under direct examination by defense counsel, Tiangco said he “psyched  himself” to sign the complaint “with eyes closed”  ahead of the caucus, but he didn’t do so after finding no “probable cause” to impeach Corona.

“I was not convinced that there was probable cause,” he said. “I understand probable cause as the probability that the accused  did what he is being accused of. How could I be convinced if there was no document of proof being presented?”

Tiangco recalled the earlier impeachment complaint prepared by the Aquino administration against then Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, when his PDAF was allegedly withheld after he refused to sign it.

“I don’t want to catch the ire of the most powerful man in the country who has a very high popularity rating, that is, the President of the Philippines,” he said.

Tiangco agreed to be a defense witness at the risk of further antagonizing the House and endangering his posts in key committees.

In the majority caucus at the  Andaya Hall that voted to impeach Corona,  Tiangco said Belmonte informed some 120-130 congressmen: “We will impeach the Chief Justice today. Chief Justice Corona is a protégé of GMA (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) and he will do nothing but protect her…”

Tiangco said Rep. Niel Tupas  Jr., chair of the House committee on justice, made a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation discussing the eight articles of impeachment. He said the presentation contained only  “bullet points” and short “narratives.” He noted that Tupas showed no document such as certifications in discussing Article 2, which alleges that Corona did not publicly  disclose his SALNs.

“I cannot sign the complaint without reading [it] first,” Tiangco said. He added that he did not like Belmonte’s statement that Corona’s impeachment was “nondebatable.”

He said Belmonte’s statement that “no questions  will be entertained” came across to him as “a veiled threat” given that the House was supposed to be “a deliberative body.”

Tiangco also said that before Tupas’ presentation, Muntinlupa Rep. Rodolfo Biazon took the floor and complained in “a high voice” that while media people knew that a caucus had been called to impeach Corona, the congressmen were not even given a copy of the complaint that they were to sign.