What independence?

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor GUILLERMO TEJIDA III Desk Editor PATRICK PANGILINAN Busines Editor NIDA A. BUENAFE Sports Editor RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

It is very interesting to note the arguments being touted by the two schools of thought in the ongoing impeachment trial of the country’s highest official in its Supreme Court, Chief Justice Renato Corona. There are those who claim that the process will be a death knell for democracy, and there are others who declare that this will, instead, strengthen the institution.

It looks now as if it all depends from which side one is viewing the issue. To backtrack a little, let us recall that, even when Corona’s name was initially mentioned as a potential nominee for the highest position in the court, protests were already aired because the appointing authority, then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, was perceived to be highly favoring him, considering their professional, and maybe even personal relationship in the past. He had served as her chief of staff when she was vice president, then her executive secretary and spokesman when she was president.

That shouldn’t have tainted the circumstances of his appointment, if not for the fact that, despite a prohibition against what are referred to as “midnight appointments”, then President Arroyo, brushing aside all the clamor against it, did appoint him, even when her successor had already been elected.

From them on, the perception that she had positioned him there precisely for her benefit, appears to have been reinforced with the decisions of the high court that followed, where some 19 of them very pointedly favored Arroyo.

Now their camp is claiming that democracy will die and the judiciary will lose its independence because of this smear on the persona of the Chief Justice.

The question that bugs the Filipino is: were those decisions that could find no wrong whatsoever in what his former boss and sponsor had done, really, truly and completely the product of an independent mind?*