Different standard for chief justices?

Solita Monsod’s article, “Knives out for Sereno” (Opinion, 3/10/18), got our attention, more particularly that part where she wholeheartedly agreed with the late senator Joker Arroyo’s take on the previous impeachment proceedings against the late chief justice Renato Corona.

In Monsod’s view, Arroyo was railing against the big deal his then fellow senator-judges considered Corona’s “erroneous statement of assets, liabilities and net worth while he was in the Supreme Court.” Corona did not disclose the enormous wealth he had amassed in that sworn statement.

Allying herself with the three then senator-judges (Arroyo, the late Miriam Santiago and Bongbong Marcos) who thought that charge was so piddling it did not deserve the light of day, Monsod minced no words: “I am one of the few who thought that he [Corona] should not have been found guilty. In this I am proud…” to be in their company.

In his letter, “Get on with the ‘kangaroo trial’”(3/3/18), George del Mar recalled the case of a “lowly court employee who failed to disclose an extra income from a market stall in the paltry sum of about P1,000 per month.” That minimum-wage earner was dismissed by the Supreme Court without mercy for such omission.

No jurisprudence speaks of greater truism than the common-law “doctrine” mentioned by Del Mar: “What is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander.” So, was Monsod saying the dismissal meted out against that “lowly court employee” was okay but too harsh against a chief justice? Come on.

CHIN CHIN KATIGBAK, [email protected]