How will the
senator-judges vote?

By now, most of the viewing public may have engaged in voicing out their views on whether the senator-judges will vote for or against the Chief Justice Renato Corona, a predictable result after the lengthy and prolonged impeachment trial.

That trial had its ups and downs. And, if one is to be honest about it, what characterized it was that the administration had used all kinds of machinations and dirty tricks to convince the public that Corona must go.

No, the principles of the law had often flown out of the window. And various efforts to protect Corona’s rights were viewed as using the law to justify a mistake.

I don’t know Corona. I never met him nor known him or any member of his family. In short, to quote a familiar refrain, he was tabula rasa insofar as I was concerned.

Thus, perhaps, I did manage to view the entire proceedings from a detached point of view. Meaning that my sight was more dispassionate than that of my other colleagues who, one way or the other, tended to show their bias for or against Corona.

But one of the things that had bothered me from the very start was that the Palace had every agency or instrumentality of the government and outside the government to besmirch Corona one way of the other. Often, with nothing but suspicions and speculations.

Corona’s main fault was that he accepted the nomination to the high tribunal to the end of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s term. That may have been dictated by the desire to serve as Chief Justice. And honor that every lawyer could have gladly aspired to. But then, that should have precisely warned him that was not the correct course.

On the other hand, if the administration and the Senators had not found him fit for the position, they should not have ratified or confirmed his nomination as such.

President Benigno Aquino III should have accorded him the respect due his position because he was confirmed by the Commission on Appointments.

But from the very start, he had already waged a determined campaign against Corona. Every trick of the game was employed against the Chief Justice.

Anyway, the die had been cast. He has been impeached. And the Senate convened into a court to try him.

But there the Liberal Party and its minions in the House had railroaded the complaints against Corona. Note that they had originally the number of complaints which ultimately reduced to just four points. No thanks to Rep. Niel Tupas (Iloilo), chair of the House Justice committee.

Tupas, in fairness, proved a joker. But he remained poker faced despite the scathing remarks of even Senator Miriam Santiago who noted his almost unimaginable fumbles as chief prosecutor.

And, to our shame as Ilonggos, Senator Franklin Drilon behaved more as a member of the prosecution rather than as senator-judge.

Time and again, Drilon either paved the way for the prosecution to pick up where it had failed to do the right thing, but virtually argued for the prosecution and explained the things they had failed to do.

I always had high hopes for Drilon, former president of the Senate and justice secretary. But, instead, he acted more like a presidential lackey.

There were times that even Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile had to warn Drilon against his excesses.

On the other hand, Senator Santiago made it an Ilonggo spectacle when she repeatedly launched her now famous tirades at the prosecution members showing them their ignorance of the law and court room behavior. And, often, she ended up virtually saying that they had no right to question her conclusions even when she must have recognized that she had also erred.

It was the sleight of hand tricks of the administration that sealed the doom of Corona. The power-point presentation by Ombudsman Morales had impressed some quarters. She was hailed as masterful without anybody questioning her the rectitude of what she did with the reported leak of the so-called dollar accounts of Corona which, by magic turned out to be 85 accounts when they were just the compendium of a series of banking procedures.

But the defense, too, had their own errors and mistakes, Justice Serafin Cuevas, time and again, fumbled and gave the prosecution the chances to pounce on his mistakes. But, in the end it will be members of the jury, the individual senator-judges must answer before God and their consciences on what is right.

The problem is that most of us do not really consider the implications of what we are doing. Or that sooner or later, God will ask each of us “what did you do with the knowledge I bequeathed to you?”

Let’s hope and pray that God’s Spirit guides all the members of the Senate tribunal to follow his conscience, not whether he is going to win in the next election or not, whether he will gain or lose the favor of the administration.

God help this country.*

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