‘Sowing the wind’

“Oppression can only survive through silence.” Who’d gag the Ombudsman from testifying before the impeachment court on the sealed dollar accounts of Chief Justice Renato Corona?

“I will obey the Senate,” said Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales, subpoenaed to appear on Monday. She’d respond to questions by 23 senator-judges. That includes her order to Corona: Explain within 72 hours charges of stashing $10 million.

No, interjected Supreme Court spokesperson Midas Marquez. Senator-judges and citizens may have to cool their heels. Suppose someone “questioned Morales’ order before the Supreme Court on the ground of grave abuse of discretion?” Midas asked. The high court may “rule on the legality of the Ombudsman’s order.”

Is Midas speculating? Or is he soliciting?

It is not illegal for citizens to hallucinate. But should a tribunal spokesperson hyperventilate, publicly, on petitions in some murky future? Or is this “hope fathering thought?”

Midas assumes the high court would stitch the Ombudsman’s lips shut if and when such a petition is filed. Crystal-balling is not included in his “terms of reference.” Or does he know something we’re not privy to?

Spokespersons are not hawkers who peddle wares in red-light districts. They’re supposed to work by a fine-tuned sense of delicadeza. That’d rule out trolling for petitioners.

The World Bank rapped Midas’ knuckles for shoddy oversight of the $21.9-million Judicial Reform Support Project. Midas announced that the high court granted Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo permission to scram. He didn’t clarify adequately conditions on bail and counsel. These sparked a standoff between the justice department and the high court—at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport’s departure lounge….

Does Midas clamber on the first available limb to defend the embattled Chief Justice? Ask Harry Roque of the University of the Philippines Law Center, who skewered Midas’ “blatantly blurring” his role as high court spokesperson with that of Corona apologist.

Will the impeachment court roll over and play dead if the high court decides, as Midas hopes, to stifle Ombudsman Morales come Monday?

“We’re happy to note you are now cooperating,” an often testy Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile told Corona’s lawyers before he issued subpoenas for the Ombudsman, Rep. Walden Bello and others. “We may ask [Corona] to tell the bank to release his foreign currency bank accounts…”

Over 36 grueling trial days, Corona has been nagged to voluntarily disclose his foreign exchange accounts. Later, later, he’d dismiss such requests. Is “later” here—finally?

Before Enrile signed the subpoenas, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III lofted another significant signal—in the direction of the Supreme Court. “Koko” yanked back his earlier support for a Senate decision to comply with a Feb. 9 “temporary restraining order” of the high court to bolt Corona’s dollar accounts. By a vote of 8-5, the high court stopped PSBank from disclosing the foreign exchange  accounts.

“It’s not a crime to have a dollar account,” the defense bristled. “Of course not,” replied Sen. Serge Osmeña, chair of the Senate committee on banks. The question is, where did the dollars, if any, come from?

We hoped that “Senate statesmanship would be reciprocated by judicial wisdom,” Pimentel said. Almost three months have lapsed. Yet, the high court has not acted one way or the other. Will it rule after the Senate adjourns on June 7? His hopes were now dashed. “I vote to enforce our order for PSBank and others to divulge … all foreign accounts of the Chief Justice,” Pimentel declared. His shift whittles down the original 13-10 vote to a razor-thin 12-11.

The high court seems in no hurry to rule. Is “temporary” six months? No? One year, maybe two? Or is “temporary” perpetual? “For Arroyo justices, ‘final’ does not mean definitive, decisive, conclusive, unchangeable or unappealable,” noted Viewpoint (Inquirer, 8/31/10). It also means “changeable, inconclusive or revocable.”

The high court flip-flopped repeatedly on “final” decisions like the 14-year-old case involving the Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines.

It cart-wheeled four times in three years on 16 towns elbowing to become cities. It upheld the gerrymandering of Camarines Sur to accommodate Rep. Diosdado “Dato” Arroyo. It agreed to Eduardo Cojuangco pocketing 16.2 million San Miguel Corp. shares by dipping into the coconut levy wrung by martial law bayonets.

Will the Corona dollar account TRO wither into “moot and academic” status? The Senate will end the trial on May 30. Meanwhile, six out of 10 believe “Corona has hidden wealth based on the undeclared money and assets in his SALN,” a Social Weather Stations survey found.

Ombudsman Morales’ track record shows a jurist who does not suffer fools gladly. Recall her dissent from the majority of justices who approved Corona’s midnight appointment as chief justice: It was jerry-rigged “on drafting trivialities that have the weight of helium.”

She acted on the pro-forma waiver that Corona, like other filers of statements of assets, liabilities and net worth, signed authorizing the Ombudsman to look into all his financial records in connection with the SALNs. Now the impeachment court has asked a constitutionally independent Office of the Ombudsman to share its findings.

Morales won’t be silenced. She’ll display the “burnished steel” of previous decisions. That’s our take. Who tries to gag this Ombudsman will sow the wind—and reap the whirlwind.

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