Legal ‘schizo’

“Tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today,” African sages counsel. What will a post-Renato Corona Supreme Court look like? The transition is inevitable. Will it come sooner, not later? How?

No one can foresee how 23 senator-judges of differing values and experience will vote. “The heart of man and the bottom of the sea are unfathomable.” The perspectives of a Ferdinand Marcos Jr. differ from that of, say, a Sen. Joker Arroyo.

Before he donned a judge’s toga, “Bongbong” tracked his late father’s cronies. Lucio Tan and others absconded with martial law loot, he griped. Arroyo led the prosecution in President Joseph Estrada’s impeachment. “We cannot have a country run by a thief,” Arroyo said in his December 2000 opening statement.

“On trial today… is not just Corona,” wrote Institute for Studies in Church and Culture’s Perla Melba Maggay. “Also in the dock are senator-judges, media, our democratic system—and our capacity as a nation to pursue justice and put closure to sins of the past….

“Filipinos are personalistic,” she added. “What seems to work (are) personal connections and an intricate network of loyalties based on interconnected interests and kinship.” This pressures the formal system. It exposes “the lack of fit between the formal adjudication system and the realities of our political culture. Impeachment (must) fulfill the substance of the law, not just the appearance,” Maggay stressed.

“The letter kills,” says the Apostle Paul.

We must “make accountability work within the constitutional remedies available to us,” Maggay stated. “Usual circumventing of the law will force our people to take to the streets as the only recourse available to them.”

Many citizens deploy guesswork-beyond-tea-leaves in Corona’s impeachment. What do strained faces of witnesses mean, we wonder. Torrents of legal minutiae swamp us. “You tithe mint, dill and cummin but neglect the weightier matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness,” an itinerant Teacher once said.

Monday to Thursdays, we hold our breaths as Corona’s defense panel juggle Jekyll and Hyde positions. At media blitzes, Corona vows complete “transparency.” But he balks at revealing all his bank accounts. He shrugs off suggestions by senator-judges that he voluntarily testify; his lawyers offer instead: How about Ms Cristina Corona taking the stand?

“There are really bank accounts under his name,” a peeved Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile told Inquirer. “(They should) get to the point. And let’s finish this case.”

See this legal schizophrenia in the context of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s “sow-dragon-teeth” exit strategy, now in tatters.

In Greek mythology, Jason scattered teeth of the dragon slain at the spring of Arbes. And from them rose warriors who battled for him. The phrase now means systematic fomenting of disputes.

GMA’s bids for term extension sputtered. Before leaving Malacañang, she arranged to run for Congress and installed scores of “midnight appointees.” These “dragon teeth” warriors were to beat back sleaze accusations.

The Arroyos were confident this rampart wouldn’t buckle. “Mama” would even seek to become Speaker of the House, Rep. Mikey Arroyo announced.

“Every path has its puddle,” an English proverb says. President Carlos Garcia’s 350 midnight nominees were fired the day Diosdado Macapagal took his oath as eighth Philippine president. “Cong Dadong” tripled “midnighters” to 1,717 when he left the Palace with young daughter Gloria in tow. GMA outdid Dad.

President-elect Benigno Aquino III fired Delfin Bangit, named Armed Forces chief of staff by GMA to overshoot her own term by 11 months. He cashiered reappointed Pagcor officials who paid P1.7 billion for 10 million cups of coffee. GMA rehired Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez for a term that sliced deeply into President Aquino’s watch. Gutierrez quit April 2011, a month after the House of Representatives impeached her for coddling the Arroyos’ interests.

Consider former Chief Justice Manuel Moran’s delicadeza, Inquirer’s Solita Monsod suggested when news leaked that Corona would be named chief justice. After serving as ambassador, Moran declined a midnight reappointment. “Leave that to the incoming president,” he demurred.

Moran’s example was institutionalized into the 1987 Constitution. It sees an outgoing president as caretaker and explicitly barred midnight appointments. No exceptions. The Arroyo Court handcuffed President-elect Aquino. In a 9-3-1 vote, the tribunal exempted a chief justice from the ban.

That’s a prohibited amendment by judicial tinkering, observed Ateneo’s Joaquin Bernas. Corona would be a de-facto chief justice, not legit, former Sen. Rene Saguisag warned. Corona scurried to don a chief justice’s robe.

Among “dragon teeth” battlers, only Corona is left. GMA is detained on election sabotage cases. That reduces impeachment to its gut issue: Does Corona meet the standards required of a chief justice?

“It’s all about character,” businessman Peter Wallace writes. “Corona does not meet the high standards demanded of the position. But if the trial continues to its end whatever the outcome, I can’t imagine how he can remain as chief justice…. It would certainly put the Supreme Court in a continually questionable position.”

Corona never pretended to be a Thomas More. Credit him with brains. He knows the story of the ghostly finger that traced on the walls of King Nebuchadnezzar’s palace: Mene, Mene, Tekel u-Parshin. “You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

(Email: [email protected])