Thank God for Conchita Carpio Morales

Thank God for Conchita Carpio Morales. It’s a sea change from the days of Merceditas Gutierrez where the ombudsman existed to make sure that no venal, corrupt or piratical public official would ever be brought to justice. Or threatened by it. One is tempted to add, “public official who is an ally of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo,” but that is really superfluous. Even non-allies of Arroyo could count on stealing with impunity from the ombudsman’s sheer ineptitude.

Though of course the coddling of allies was more patent and reached ludicrous lengths. The case of Mega Pacific winning the bid to computerize elections was classic in that respect. The case, which cost government P3 billion, was brought before the ombudsman who ruled after apparently much investigation that it was a crime without a criminal!

In one fell swoop, Morales has changed the image of the ombudsman, courtesy of her appearance in the impeachment court. Finally we have someone who is dedicated to her work. Finally we have someone who is scrupulous about her research. Finally we have someone who knows what she’s doing. P-Noy’s anticorruption campaign has just gotten a face, and that is Morales. If Renato Corona is finally found guilty as sin, as Morales should leave the senator-judges in little doubt about, it will owe a great deal to her. If P-Noy’s crusade to rid this spot of earth of its dregs, as Morales should leave the public in little doubt about, it will owe a great deal to her.

By now the defense lawyers must be banging their heads against the wall wondering what madness persuaded them to trot out Morales as a witness, hostile or not. She has been devastating—against them.

What were they thinking? They could browbeat her into submission or to a state of frazzled nerves? They could run circles around her with their vaunted prowess, or long years of experience, in trial lawyering? They could make her rethink her position and wonder if she hadn’t really fudged her numbers?

Well, none of the above happened. As the defense should have expected. She wasn’t a justice for nothing and answered questions in a composed and assured way. In her testimony, she recounted how she had acted on the complaints against Corona with scrupulous care, knowing that complaints against public officials were a dime-a-dozen. She had consulted with other government offices, as was the mandate of the ombudsman, particularly with the Anti-Money Laundering Council, which had supplied her with the figures. She had then gotten the help of the Commission on Audit to make a graphic presentation, tracing the flow of dollars in and out of Corona’s 82 accounts. It was a model of how to go about preparing a case.

The sensation you got from watching Serafin Cuevas trying to rattle her was exactly that, someone banging his head against a wall. In one hilarious moment, though I doubt Cuevas found it so; Morales even corrected him for presuming that you needed a bankbook to deposit and withdraw money in and from a bank so that the transaction would be recorded in it. The Ombudsman gave him to understand that times had changed, that all you now needed for it was an ATM card. She even proceeded to show him how it was done.

In the end Cuevas was reduced to trying to punch holes in her testimony by demanding to know if she bothered to check the veracity of the information AMLC gave her. Which she answered by saying that there was no reason to doubt the information; you could presume that the source, being the natural authority on the subject, supplied accurate data. A thing Bautista of the prosecution corroborated by citing two laws that commended it: information from such sources could stand as evidence. In any case, as Morales pointed, how could you check AMLC’s figures short of asking the banks which the law proscribed, as Cuevas himself had reminded her the day before? It was the next best thing, but it was as best as they came.

You truly have to wonder what madness persuaded the defense lawyers to shoot themselves in the head by subpoenaing Morales. The religious will probably cite Divine Providence; the more secular, a case of the best-laid plots of mice and men oft going astray. Whatever their plot was, they have produced the opposite effect, laying a corona before Corona’s coffin. Morales was unshakeable. Whatever doubts the public might have harbored about Corona’s guilt, she has dispelled them.

Her testimony has boxed him in, limiting his options. Does he go on to appear before the impeachment court anyway? Armed with what? Short of allowing the court access to his dollar accounts to show either that they are no longer active or that they do not contain the sums the Ombudsman alleges, what else can he do to refute the charges against him?

In the end, what Morales has done is to simplify the equation. Being well-versed in law herself, she has neutralized the defense’s tendency to reduce everything to a technical level and raised the discussion to a substantial one. After her testimony, the questions of whether or not the impeachment court may pry on Corona’s foreign currency deposits, whether or not the Ombudsman has jurisdiction over the chief justice, whether or not, as Miriam Santiago dwelled bombastically and interminably on last Tuesday, the Ombudsman may investigate Corona only with a view to another impeachment—all these have become irrelevant. The only question left in the mind of the public, if not indeed in those of the senator-judges, is: Mr. Corona, do you or do you not have $10, or $12, million in the banks? Answer the question.

That is how things now stand.

Thank God for Conchita Carpio Morales.