Protecting Corona

All those who hoped that Chief Justice Renato Corona would finally take the witness stand at the resumption of his impeachment trial, as he said he would (“Haharapin ko nang buong tapang at talino ang mga walang basehang paratang na ito, punto por punto, sa Senado. Handang handa akong humarap sa paglilitis”)—well, it’s time to banish the thought. Where Corona’s defense team had earlier found it useful to titillate the public every now and then with that possibility, now it’s a dead option.

“As a defense counsel, I cannot, in good faith, advise him to testify, because the question will be: Can you protect me in case there are improper questions asked?” said lawyer Jose Roy III. “And I will truthfully tell him that I cannot object. In other words, what is the point of me acting as a defense counsel if I’m going to leave him unprotected on the witness stand?”

“Unprotected.” As if Corona, the Philippines’ foremost legal mind by virtue of his position, would be helpless in his own milieu, the courtroom. And his repeated reassurances that he has nothing to hide, that he would clarify all the charges and evidence presented against him so far “in due time”? Apparently, come due time, the country’s top magistrate is willing to risk coming off as a liar, a fibber, a prevaricator who strings people along like any two-bit politician, because the rigors of a trial—the solemn proceedings at the very heart of the judicial system he heads, and supposedly the supreme instrument for ferreting out the truth and administering justice in this land—is too much for his delicate constitution.

And so, after a weeks-long break that primed the nation to expect additional testimony from Corona’s camp that, at last, would begin to clear the Chief Justice’s name of the issues raised against him, what it got instead was the same rigmarole: a parade of witnesses offering disclosures that an exasperated Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile decried as “irrelevant, immaterial and impertinent.”

The witnesses were foisted on the impeachment court in line with the defense’s efforts to justify Corona’s now well-documented financial wealth and property holdings. But none of them, of course, could explain away the elephant in the room that Corona and his lawyers would have the nation ignore: his dollar deposits.

As has been made clear, Corona will not take the witness stand and also has no intention of opening his dollar deposits to public scrutiny anytime soon. Not when his colleagues at the Supreme Court have conveniently helped him out by scheduling their next hearing on the temporary restraining order they levied on the accounts’ disclosure on June 26 yet—after the projected wrap-up of the impeachment trial. And not when his lawyers think they could simply paper over the matter by maneuvering to keep those deposits away from the senator-judges’ eyes, and by extension, the public’s as well.

To this end, they’ve made their game plan plain. They would block any attempt to introduce as trial evidence the separate inquiry by Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales into Corona’s dollar accounts, the aggregate sum of which is said to reach $10 million.

A former Supreme Court justice herself, Morales is senior to Corona and, unlike the latter, is untainted by scandal or irregularity. Her credibility and the apparent solidity of her charges—she is reported to have gotten around the bank secrecy law by virtue of a little-noticed waiver in Corona’s signed statement of assets, liabilities and net worth—have obviously spooked Corona and his lawyers, hence Roy’s blustery words: “Of course, we are going to stop it. Why should we allow it to come in? Remember, there is a TRO on all kinds of dollar accounts and information regarding foreign currency deposits.”

Ah, but there is also Corona’s promise—not only to open his dollar accounts, but also to face the charges against him head-on. This quest for truth about the character and fitness for office of its Chief Justice has been a gut-wrenching process, one that has brought the nation to the brink of upheaval. But it seems more like a game to Corona’s lawyers. Roy has been quoted as saying that “the clamor for Corona to take the witness stand is driven more by publicity and quest for drama rather than real intent to prove the allegations in the articles of impeachment.”

The nerve. By Roy’s reckoning, the Filipino people waiting all this time for Corona to tell his story, in his own words, are all just being drama queens.