Corona’s character

What do you have to do to drive a 90-year-old nun to anger? What offense would you have to commit against her to earn her lifelong enmity? True, Sr. Flory Basa says she has long “forgiven” her niece, Cristina Roco-Corona, and her husband, impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona. After all, they are still family.

But, adds the missionary sister, she continues to pray “for [Cristina’s] enlightenment because I heard she has not been doing the right things anymore.”

Her lifelong calling may have driven Sister Flory to confer forgiveness on her family members despite their many offenses. But her religion and spirituality have not stopped her from seeking justice not just for herself but also for her other relatives. She may be a religious sister, but it hasn’t blinded her to the wrongs committed against her and her family—by another family member, at that.

At dispute is the status of the family firm, its real estate holdings and income derived from the sale of these properties. Founded by Sister Flory’s parents, Basa-Guidote Enterprises Inc. (BGEI) was supposed to belong to the Basa siblings, including Sister Flory and Ms Corona’s mother, but over the years, control of the firm as well as the income derived from its properties has fallen on Ms Corona, with the rest of the family kept in the dark about its true worth.

The rest of us would not have known about the painful family saga were it not for the impeachment trial. And this because Corona’s lawyers used the family firm to explain the origins of money and property under the Chief Justice’s name and even declared in his statements of assets, liabilities and net worth. In fact, a lot of Ms Corona’s relatives only found out the real extent of the Coronas’ control of the family corporation when the Corona lawyers began citing BGEI as the source of much of Corona’s income.

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The plight of Sister Flory and her relatives should sound familiar to the senators and other officials who were sitting in the Judicial and Bar Council when Renato Corona’s name came up for associate justice and then chief justice.

Ms Corona’s uncle had written to the JBC to question Corona’s fitness for office given his behavior in the family dispute. The protest was based on questions of Corona’s probity, integrity and fidelity to his calling as a public official, given that Corona, according to his late uncle-in-law, had allegedly used his influence to intimidate judges and other regulators hearing the various cases.

Apparently, the JBC chose to ignore the complaint, probably because the members thought the protest arose from a family dispute which had nothing to do with Corona’s fitness for office. But as we are finding out now, Corona was not above using his position as a Malacañang official and later as a Supreme Court justice and Chief Justice to steal control of a family firm from his wife’s relatives, including a 90-year-old nun. Character is destiny, and Corona’s character affected the fate of the Basa-Guidote family members and the fate of the rest of the nation as well.

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We have had many hints as to the true composition of the Chief Justice’s character. One is his penchant for special treatment, whether it be the grant of a doctoral degree “summa cum laude” without putting in the requisite academic work, or accepting a nomination and appointment to the office of Chief Justice even if he very well knew it would violate the Constitution.

Now we have heard stories about his tendency to use his power to prevail over others (what P-Noy calls the “wang-wang mentality”), even if those others are his wife’s family members. Lord knows what we will find out later about his penchant for using power to sway the decisions of his colleagues in the high court.

Coincidentally, I read the column of David Brooks in the March 5 issue of the New York Times on the recent passing of “eminent social scientist” James Q. Wilson who is best known for his “broken windows” theory—how quick and effective response to crime is needed to bring down crime rates, because, just as broken windows in a building allowed to stand unrepaired invite further vandalism, so does official inaction against crime invite further criminality.

But more than just criminality, it was “character” that preoccupied Wilson, and the central role it played in social theory. Others pooh-poohed the issue of character in public policy, to which Wilson retorted: “It’s as if it were a mark of sophistication for us to shun the language of morality in discussing the problems of mankind.”

Brooks writes of Wilson: “At root, [he] wrote in 1985 in The Public Interest, ‘in almost every area of important concern, we are seeking to induce persons to act virtuously, whether as schoolchildren, applicants for public assistance, would-be lawbreakers or voters and public officials.’”

“Wilson was not a philosopher. He was a social scientist,” explains Brooks. “He just understood that people are moral judgers and moral actors, and he reintegrated the vocabulary of character into discussions of everyday life.”

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Perhaps the members of the JBC sitting on judgment on Corona’s fitness for the Supreme Court should have read Wilson first before they dismissed outright an uncle-in-law’s pained plea about the then candidate’s character and the implications of such a character on the public welfare.

If they had paid more attention to the question of Corona’s character, perhaps we would not now have to sit through many an afternoon pondering the articles of impeachment, and wondering how such a man was entrusted with ultimate power over the judicial branch and deciding cases not just on questions of law, legality or constitutionality, but even of morality, private and public.