Smoking gun?

Things have taken a truly interesting, indeed critical, turn at the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, whose lawyers have challenged the very power of the Senate impeachment court to try their client. A day after the court allowed the issuance of subpoenas to bank officials to present documents showing bank deposits that Corona had purportedly failed to declare in his statements of assets, liabilities and net worth, the defense petitioned the Supreme Court to not only issue a temporary restraining order on the summonses to the bank officials but also to stop the impeachment trial itself. It’s a highly provocative move—as if a gauntlet has been thrown down, if one wants to be dramatic about it—particularly because the Senate impeachment court has more than once declared its unqualified power to try an impeached government official and to decide on all matters pertinent to the case before it.

The defense will quite naturally deny it, but at the very least it seems to be saying that its client has much to hide.

Chief defense lawyer Serafin Cuevas had sufficiently telegraphed his team’s move in saying that “we’ll have no other alternative but to seek another venue,” and in posing the question to Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, the presiding officer of the trial: “If the policy of the impeachment court is that no motion for reconsideration may be made by counsel [regarding the issuance of subpoenas to the bank officials], then where else are we going to go to question the validity or legality of the decision of this court?”

As amazing as it may sound, the defense was in effect saying that it would ignore the Senate impeachment court’s “sole power” to try the case against Corona.

The defense had also asked the senator-judges to defer action on the subpoenas issued to the officials of Philippine Savings Bank (PSBank) and Bank of the Philippine Islands. That the senator-judges voted in caucus on Wednesday to deny that request was an expected result; they merely upheld what Sen. Franklin Drilon said of the impeachment court: “supreme in its power to try and decide impeachment cases.”

Apprehensions have been raised with regard to the summonses issued to the bank officials to present documents and information on the Chief Justice’s bank deposits, including foreign currency deposits that Republic Act No. 6426 pronounces as confidential. Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who had earlier said the impeachment court should accept as much testimonial and documentary evidence as possible in order to preclude perceptions that it was engaged in acts of suppression (by her own admission a lesson learned from her experience as a senator-judge at then President Joseph Estrada’s impeachment trial), was reported as going so far as to warn of bank runs and “devastating” effects on the economy. But attentive observers of the trial would note that the impeachment court’s decision to uphold the subpoenas on the bank officials is not a blanket call to open all bank accounts to public scrutiny. They would point out that the matter at hand involves an impeached government official, indeed the top magistrate of the land, of whom, more than other high public officials enjoying the perquisites of power, is expected the virtues of honor, integrity and all the other virtues attendant to the post he holds.

The outcome of the impeachment court’s decision to uphold the subpoenas on the bank officials remains open-ended as we speak, with the PSBank’s own motion for a TRO pending at the high court and the contending camps’ range of legal skills and maneuvers on full display. If the (reluctant) disclosure of the Chief Justice’s statements of assets, liabilities and net worth early on in the trial is any indication, it is fair to assume that the presentation of his bank deposits will take on a similar tortuous route.

If nothing else, the impeachment trial of the Chief Justice largely reflects the labyrinthine ways of the legal system as it involves powerful individuals with vast resources at their disposal. Nothing of the sort can be expected in cases involving lesser mortals. Those who expect the law to train a searching light on what could possibly be a smoking gun are well advised to hunker down for a long wait.