Tag: Impeachment

Ano ba talaga?

At this writing Corona has produced five witnesses. His first witness testified on the provenance of the impeachment complaint, a topic that the Impeachment Court ruled off-limits two months ago. All of Monday and long minutes of Tuesday were wasted as the Senate tolerated his bellyaching over the late release of his pork barrel. Why did the Impeachment Court put up with him? Because senators are politicians and the witness is the kingpin of a vote-rich congressional district.

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Miriam Sends Hell Into a Crisis

A Catholic priest accidentally sent a residential area of Afterlife reeling in fear and confusion when he consigned a Philippine senator to Hell for publicly insulting prosecutors in the impeachment of the country’s top jurist.

Father Catalino Arevalo declared in a homily that Sen. Miriam Santiago deserved “the fires of Hell” for calling prosecutors fools for their mishandling of their accusations. The priest’s pronouncement immediately sent shivers to residents of the Hellfire and Brimstone neighborhoods of Hell.

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Why me?

After the prosecution showed the wide disparity between impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona’s undeclared assets and the assets he declared under oath in his SALNs (Statement of Assets, Liabilities and net worth), Corona’s apostles counterattacked with a story lifted from the gospel of John.

They said John wrote that Jesus told a crowd who had gathered to stone a woman caught committing adultery, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. From there they turned to the prosecution panel and the senator judges and asked, “Who among you has never lied in his SALN?”

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It’s more fun with Cuevas

Lead defense counsel of impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona, Serafin Cuevas, a former associate justice in the Marcos Supreme Court who has been impressing the public with his vast knowledge of legal technicalities and legal maneuvers— proved himself ham-handed at cross-examination. He blew his cross-examination of BIR (Bureau of Internal Revenue) Commissioner Kim Henares and BPI (Bank of the Philippine Islands) branch manger Leonora Dizon.

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Compromise

Is the Supreme Court superior to the Impeachment Court or is the Impeachment Court supreme within its ambit? That is the question of the moment.

Lawyers will always cite the Constitutional provision that favors their argument. One side will point to Art VIII Sec 1 (The Supreme Court has the power and the duty “to determine whether or not there has been a grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction on the part of any branch or instrumentality of the Government”) and the other side will cite Art X1 Sec 6 (“The Senate shall have the sole power to try and decide all cases of impeachment”). Either argument is solid so the question, if neither side gives in, will have to be resolved arbitrarily.

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Convict him already

Last December, impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona said he would answer the charges against him point by point. Bring it on, right? But so far, instead of answering the charges, his lawyers have objected to practically every land title and mis-declared SALN (Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth) the prosecution has tried to present.

The defense strategy has been to prevent battled-tested private prosecutors from arguing points of law and limiting them to direct examination of witnesses; convincing senator-judges that the headings of the articles of impeachment are the substance of the charge; and that the bar of impeachment should be raised above and beyond anyone’s reach.

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Sentido comun por favor

Before yesterday’s hearing, I thought I had the defense strategy figured out: Tie the hands of the prosecution; block the submission of evidence by raising legal technicalities; confuse the public with legal gobbledygook; and distract everybody with the hairdo of Justice Cuevas. I figured wrong. I didn’t see the secret weapon of the defense: a remote control device to activate the motor mouth of lead prosecutor Iloilo Representative Niel Tupas.

Less talk, less mistake! Hasn’t anybody told Tupas that?

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What’s with SALNs? (Part 2)

The public disclosure element plays a very vital cog in the system of accountability that the Constitution wanted to achieve on SALNs. It empowers the citizens to scrutinize and verify the two other main elements of truthful declaration and submission.

But the public disclosure component leaves much to be desired in practice. One mechanism to frustrate compliance is through administrative avoidance. Rather than facilitating the orderly implementation of Section 8 (C) of RA 6713, some government agencies apply instead the general duty, also under RA 6713, to act promptly on letters and requests within 15 days from a request. Any response, including acknowledgement, referral, or indication of future action, is regarded as substantive compliance.

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What’s With SALNs? (Part 1)

Chief Justice Renato C. Corona’s impeachment has called attention to the legal requirement that public officers and employees submit a declaration of their assets, liabilities and net worth, or what is commonly referred to as SALNs. Under Article II of the Impeachment Complaint, Chief Justice Corona is accused of having “failed to disclose to the public his statement of assets, liabilities, and net worth”, that some of his properties “are not included in his declaration of his assets, liabilities, and net worth”, and that he has “accumulated ill-gotten wealth.”

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Lawyers need not apply

It is the position of the current Board of Governors of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) that the impeachment of Chief Justice Corona undermines judicial independence.

“If the Chief Justice can be validly impeached for collegial decisions (including pending cases) for “political bias” and hauled to the Senate to undergo the rigors of political trial, all by a mere stroke of 1/3 signatures of the House gathered in blitz, then the Supreme Court will never be the same again, its judicial independence defanged, and its magistrates—including their decisions—now at the mercy of the political bidding, if not power plays, of the ruling House majority and the President.”

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Some questions regarding certain questions

Chief Justice Corona argues that the Senate must first determine if the impeachment complaint has been properly verified before trial begins. What does this mean in practical terms? The impeachment trial will be delayed because the Senate will have to subpoena all 188 congressmen who signed the impeachment complaint and question them individually as to whether or not they read each and every word of the complaint before they signed it. Furthermore, if Corona can prove that some congressmen signed without reading the complaint they can be charged with perjury.

Corona also raised the House rule that says only congressmen can act as prosecutors in an impeachment trial. The answer of Congress to Corona’s contention is the trial will be under Senate rules and they allow private prosecutors. So there will be a debate and that will also delay the trial.

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Who wrote it?

So Chief Justice Corona’s answer to the verified impeachment complaint is to ask for its dismissal because it is biased, done with “undue haste”, and failed to comply with the requirement of verification.

Impeached Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez made a similar allegation when she challenged the impeachment complaint against her but the Court said, “Petitioner contends that the “indecent and precipitate haste” of public respondent in finding the two complaints sufficient in form and substance is a clear indication of bias, she pointing out that it only took public respondent five minutes to arrive thereat. An abbreviated pace in the conduct of proceedings is not per se an indication of bias…. For one’s prompt dispatch may be another’s undue haste…The presumption of regularity includes the public officer’s official actuations in all phases of work.”

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