The week consisted of only two hearing days, but it finished with a dramatic twist that can very well decide how this trial will end. After 36 days of trial and public statements that he will make a clean breast of the charges leveled against him, Chief Justice Renato Corona will finally take the stand.
During the six-week hiatus, the Ombudsman began an investigation into the alleged dollar accounts of the Chief Justice. That line of inquiry had earlier met a dead end in the impeachment trial. The prosecution tried, after the PSBank president no less confirmed the existence of the dollar accounts. However, the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order to maintain the confidentiality of these foreign currency accounts, and the Senate, with 13 in favor and 10 against, voted to respect it.
The Ombudsman’s investigation thus gives a second wind to the allegation on the dollar accounts, but until this week, the Ombudsman and impeachment proceedings remained parallel but separate. By Thursday, the two proceedings were intertwined, as Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile subpoenaed the Ombudsman herself, Conchita Carpio Morales, and the complainants in the case before the Ombudsman. Corona’s counsel then offered that, should these persons testify in the impeachment, the Chief Justice himself would appear before the Senate.
Most dramatic moment
By the end of Day 35, Enrile expressed dismay at the marginal testimonies offered by the defense that did not address the heart of the impeachment charges. Even worse, of the original eight articles of impeachment, only three remained (the rest having been dropped by the prosecution): omissions in Corona’s statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN), judicial flip-flopping and leading the Supreme Court to lift the watch-list order on former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Of the three, only the SALN issue remains formidable and, even then, the defense does not squarely address it despite the 17 witnesses it has presented to date.
Until then, Enrile had been most deferential to chief defense counsel Serafin Cuevas, a marked contrast to Enrile’s brusque treatment of lesser counsel. Yet in the most telling and dramatic moment of the week, Enrile told Cuevas pointedly: “Is it your position there is no prima facie case presented in this court? If that’s your position, that’s your problem.”
Sen. Jinggoy Estrada followed that up with a forthright plea to the defense to make the Chief Justice testify. The next day, the defense announced that if the Chief Justice’s accusers before the Ombudsman would testify, Corona himself would take the stand.
June 7 deadline
Enrile earlier announced that the trial must end before the Senate adjourns this current session on June 7 in preparation for the State of the Nation Address at the opening of Congress on July 23. Indeed, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago announced that the Senate has the power essentially to rush the parties to conclude the case. And in the ensuing hearing, Enrile showed just how.
He would berate the defense counsel “to go straight to the point,” instead of meandering through irrelevant questions. He would actually ask the counsel to forgo the testimony of superfluous witnesses—for instance, the market administrator of the Manila city government whose testimony would merely confirm what other witnesses had already said. (On the other hand, he would also compel Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to testify, despite the prosecution’s insistence that there was nothing more she could add to her testimony on the watch-list order.)
Inessential testimonies
For instance, the prosecution cross-examined former Manila Mayor Lito Atienza on the expropriation of the Sampaloc property of Basa Guidote Enterprises Inc. (BGEI), the family corporation of the Chief Justice’s wife, Cristina Corona. He had earlier testified that the city government had paid P37.7 million to her “in trust for” BGEI. The defense now says that it was from this fund that the Coronas borrowed to buy some properties.
Yet Enrile asked why the prosecution was taking pains to prove irregularities in the payment, when all that was relevant was that “money passed hands” and ended up with Cristina Corona.
Another witness testified on the recurring question of nondelivery, despite full payment, of the Bonifacio Ridge condominium due to defects. So who owned it in the meantime? Sen. Serge Osmeña in an earlier session argued that the SALN should have reflected that wealth in whatever form, whether as cash (P9.1 million), as real estate (the condominium unit), or as an account receivable.
A third defense witness was a court employee who testified that Cristina Corona successfully sued her relatives for libel, and that the award enabled her to win control of the family corporation. The prosecution raised technicalities in the execution of the libel award. One defendant had already died, so how can he still be liable, they asked? When the sheriff sold the BGEI assets in a public auction, a Corona daughter was the sole bidder and it was sold for a song.
Key question
The decisive question has actually been asked by Sen. Franklin Drilon of defense counsel Jud Roy: Even if the dollar deposits are confidential under banking rules, didn’t the Chief Justice have a duty to report them in his SALN under the rules on public accountability? This is a difficult legal issue, and which way the Senate goes will decide whether the Chief Justice stays or goes.