Hauntings

A couple of interesting things took place before the resumption of the impeachment trial this week.

The first was that the SWS released its latest survey, which included the approval rating of Renato Corona. The survey was taken from March 10-13. When the SWS released a survey prior to this, Corona’s approval rating had already taken a dive. The defense shrugged it off, saying that was to be expected, it hadn’t yet presented its case. This time around, it had done so, or at least made its first pitch, so Corona’s rating would have improved, right?

Wrong. It plunged still further, going from a negative 14 percent to a negative 28 percent net approval rating.

It’s not very hard to see why.

At the very least, it shows the monumental gap between the kind of thinking the defense has been trying to foist on the public and the one the public continues to hold. Or more to the point, it shows the monumental gap between legalistic thinking and common sense.

For the defense, the problem is simple. Prove Corona guilty beyond the shadow of doubt of the specific charges (and none other) against him. If not, then he is free and remains chief justice. For the public—and the prosecution—it is equally simple: Prove Corona fit to hold on to his office. If not, then he is out and best sent packing for the same place his favorite non-president is headed.

The defense may imagine it is winning the case because the prosecution hasn’t really been able to pin down Corona to any of the articles of impeachment, largely because of its efforts to box in the proceedings to a narrow framework—the prosecution may not talk about anything that lies outside its specific charges—but that is not how it’s getting across to the public. What is so is the prosecution’s proposition at the start of the trial that this case is about character, or pagkatao, as the Tagalog puts it more forcefully.

The question is whether Corona deserves to remain chief justice or not. That is where the houses, the fraudulent SALN, or far more devastatingly the Basas’ case against the Corona couple have wreaked havoc on him.

At the very most, the defense’s tack which, even before it took to the floor to present its side, consisted of preventing the prosecution from revealing things about Corona, dramatically shown in a Supreme Court TRO stopping his dollar accounts from being opened, hasn’t really helped. Again, the defense may imagine it is winning the case because of successful ruses like this, but that is not how it strikes the public. Quite apart from the fact that it suggests complicity between the defense, the Court, and Corona, it suggests even more powerfully that Corona has something to hide. Or as the Tagalog puts it still even better, may tinatago si Corona.

You make the public see that things being withheld from them, and nothing shows that more than all the objections-your-honor the defense has made, they won’t find the accused as pure as driven snow, they’ll find him as soiled as a week-old underwear.

Nor has Corona’s efforts to appeal his case directly to the public helped him. His posturing, that he is heroically defending the Judiciary against the tyrannical exactions of the Executive, isn’t just getting him nowhere, it’s doing him harm. The images alone subvert his case: He does not exactly cut the figure of a crusader, and P-Noy does not exactly cut the figure of a despot. Quite apart from that, a fierce sense of independence is the last virtue he should want to parade before the public. Well before the impeachment, he was already widely seen as the stooge of a very real despot.

For the public, the issue is simple and has to do with character or pagkatao. Is Corona someone you’d want anywhere near Lady Justice? Their answer, as shown by the surveys, is no.

Of course the senator-judges can always ignore that answer. But that brings us to the second thing that’s happened last week.

That’s the fact that the elections next year are already warming up this early. The vice president, Jojo Binay, has already announced an alliance with former President Joseph Estrada’s party and named their prospective list of senatorial aspirants, which includes several of the senator-judges. The Liberal Party has shot back by accusing Binay of cuddling up with Arroyo, a fact that both Binay and Erap have vigorously denied. Meanwhile, not to be outdone, the Nacionalista Party has tried to grab some attention by saying it is going to field a “lean and mean” slate next year.

Six of the senator-judges are running again. They are Chiz Escudero, Loren Legarda, Alan Peter Cayetano, Gringo Honasan, Koko Pimentel, and Antonio Trillanes. Juan Ponce Enrile’s son, Jackie, is running too, as is Edgardo Angara’s son, Juan. So is Jinggoy’s half-brother, JV. The question quite obviously is: Will the senator-judges in particular who will soon be courting the people’s votes, if they are not indeed doing so now, be oblivious to the public’s sentiments on Corona? Or more to the point, will the senator-judges, not least of them Enrile whose son has clearly benefited from his widely acclaimed performance as presiding officer of the court, be impervious to them?

From the start, it was always clear that an impeachment trial was a completely different animal from an ordinary court trial. From the start, it was always clear that an impeachment trial was a political, quite apart from legal, exercise, and so in more ways than one. From the start, it was always clear that the Corona impeachment trial, like the Erap one, would be held in a larger court than the Senate and would have more than the senators for its judges. Those truths are fairly self-evident.

Truths that are so will keep coming back to haunt.