First appraisal

The first four days of the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona are over. We can make a first appraisal of the results, which centered on the second impeachment article on the non-disclosure of CJ Corona’s statement of assets, liabilities, and net worth (SALN).

These four days can be characterized as a game of patintero. The prosecution, nervous as a mouse, tries to get past the big legal cats guarding the line. However, at the of the four days, it is the defense cats that are getting nervous. The first three city registrar of deeds (Taguig City, Quezon City, and Marikina City) had taken the witness stand and produced titles and deed of sales of various properties owned by the CJ Corona and his family. Taken on their face, these documents already pointed to big discrepancies in the list of properties and their price-values entered in the SALNs and as recorded in the register of deeds.

The only thing that the defense at this point can do is to impugn these documents, prevent their entry into the court record, and otherwise question their relevancy. The latter is based on the line of questioning that the defense had taken. Both inside and outside the trial proper, the defense asserted that producing the SALN already satisfies and answers the second article of impeachment and that the titles and deeds produced by the witnesses are irrelevant.

The defense argued on technicalities–they know that the factual side of the argument offers them nothing to base their defense. If it fails to prevent the entry into the court record of these evidence, then there is the possibility of an abbreviated trial. The senator-judges may just decide to change the rules and vote immediately.

The uphill battle of CJ Corona has just gone steeper. He will need all the expertise and skills of his veteran defense team. However, this may not be enough.

Abangan ang susunod na kabanata.

A political court

So, we arrived at last at the Show, er, the Philippine Senate convened as an impeachment court. Along the way, lost opportunities, false pretenses, showbiz posturings littered the way. A sideshow–even if it has the dynamics of its own–to the main political battle between the Aquino administration and the former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Even as the impeachment has legal rules and is mandated by the Constitution, yet it cannot be denied that it is essentially a political process. This is starkly underlined in the impeachment trial of SC Chief Justice Renato Corona. 23 senators, of whom only nine are lawyers, will decide whether he is still fit to serve as a justice of the Supreme Court.

All the 23 senators will decide on the basis of their individual appreciation of the evidence, sense of justice, and requirements of the position. Without admitting, all of them will have one eye on the public pulse–their national constituency–and on the political will of the Chief Executive. Of course, also without admitting it, they know they themselves and the Senate as an institution are also in trial.

Inevitably, the need to restore (or affirm, if the Corona camp is to be believed) the faith and trust in the impartiality, dignity and honor of the Supreme Court will become paramount. This suggests–even demands–that the decision will be political.

Again, this is not in the sense of partisan political alignments–though this will have its own influence. It is political because it addresses not the legal bases and ramifications of the process but the institutional and policy imperatives of democratic governance.

I think, at the end of the day, the senator-judges will realize that they have very few options–and all of these are political. Meanwhile, the Show will go on…

Judging the judges

Whatever the outcome of the impeachment trial of Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona, it is already evident that he is not only the one in trial. Other SC justices perceived to be with him, the institutions of the Supreme Court and the judiciary, and even the Senate and senators, will all be under the lens of the people’s scrutiny during the impeachment trial.

Of course, the focus will be on CJ Corona. However, the articles of impeachment can very well apply to the majority of the associate justices of the Supreme Court. It is in this sense that the impeachment trial may well be the trial of the institution itself.

However, the nature of an impeachment process is one of a corrective measure, targeted at those officials at the top of the power chain who otherwise cannot be removed. In this case, the cleansing of the ranks of the SC justices is being done in order to regain the trust of the people in the institution. It therefore is well within the accountability principle in a democratic governance regime.

It is not true that impeachment weakens the Supreme Court or the judiciary. Nor does it constitutes a constitutional crisis or–more far-fetched–a return to a dictatorship. Precisely, an impeachment process, as a constitutional process, is a democratic instrument that provide a check on the powers of the highest officials–including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Impeachment also provides a rare opportunity for people to really get to know the lives and behavior of these officials and decide for themselves whether they are fit or not for the powerful jobs they were elected or appointed to. The people remains the ultimate actor and judge in the process.

CJ Corona has a slim chance to survive unscathed the impeachment trial. The more probable outcome–whatever the vote of the senators–is that his credibility before the people will be damaged beyond repair and there is no choice but to leave the institution. This also goes for those justices who voted with him on crucial issues enumerated in the articles of impeachment.

The truth of the matter here is that the impeachment process is essentially a political process. Not really the partisan politics one associates with the latter but a more fundamental process associated with the exercise of people’s sovereignty in a democracy.

I think CJ Corona and his cohort in the Supreme Court are at a crossroad. They face a hostile public going into the impeachment trial and they face an uphill battle to convince the people of their fitness for their SC positions. The plunge to negative ratings (-14% in the SWS polls) seems to indicate a certain conclusion. They have one choice–to go now before an impeachment trial starts or go later because of the failure to convince the sovereign people.

Whatever, the judges will have been judged.

2011-PNoy’s year

Wherever we are in the political spectrum, it cannot be denied that 2011 was a year defined politically by President Benigno Aquino III. It was the year which started with some nervousness from the people themselves who elected him to power. The question, of course, was his competence for presidency.

The first six months of his term  was a so-so period when the newness to the post showed itself in various ways: his anti-poverty policies were at one time termed simplistic, his handling of the Luneta incident termed amateurish, and his various Executive Orders termed legally weak. However, it was a genuine learning curve that the people accepted.

Going into 2011, the nervousness was beginning to show–with the surveys showing a downward spiral. Though still high, it would seem to reach a critical level by end-2011. Opposition and critics had a field day feasting on an “amateur president” presiding over a “student council” of a cabinet. There were attempts to stir up trouble in the military and the hack media made a killing from the funders of destabilization.

All for naught. At the end of 2011, the surveys showed the President regaining the high level of popular support that won him the landslide in 2010. Now, his programs are holding their ground, particularly the pledge to combat corruption and prosecute the “big fishes” of the Arroyo administration who figured in major cases in the past decade. GMA and Abalos are in jail, Palparan is on the run, Gutierrez is out of the Ombudsman office, and SC Chief Justice Corona has been impeached.

It is not a coincidence that people have high hopes for the new year, a high 95% according to SWS survey. It is the expectation for better governance and a better life in the coming year under the Aquino government.

2011 was the year Aquino proved his political will, backed up by a huge popular support from the sovereign people. The entire spectrum of political forces in the country has taken note of it and are acting accordingly. 2012 will prove whether he knows how to wield the awesome power of his political position in the greater interests of the whole nation and people.

2012 will be an interesting political year.

Myth of judicial infallibility

In the aftermath of Chief Justice Corona’s impeachment, much has been said in his defense. Of course, one must observe and respect the right of his defenders to stand up and be counted, inasmuch as this is also the right of those who criticized him. Our constitution (as well as international human rights instruments) says:

“No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.” (Article III, Section 4)

However, an aspect of Corona’s defense that need a deeper scrutiny concerns the infallibility of Supreme Court decisions, which the proponents stridently argue needs to be outside of the impeachment process. Some would even take the position that the impeachment of the Chief Justice itself should not be done. Otherwise, they say, the “Rule of Law” and the “independence of the judiciary” will be at stake. They shudder, “Without ‘Rule of Law,’ there will be “rule of the mob.” It is not surprising that all of those who argue this comes from the legal community.

From the point of view of the ordinary citizen, this does not resonate. The public mood–and the public opinion–is overwhelmingly in favor of the Corona impeachment. While some take off from a conclusion that CJ Corona (or, for that matter, all the pro-Arroyo justices) should be made to pay for their alleged partisanship and corruption, others are willing to let the impeachment process prove or reject the articles of impeachment. Nowhere, I think, in all the pro-impeachment pronouncements, is there a direct attack on the institutions of the judiciary, including the Supreme Court.

The “Rule of Law” argument is another matter. When it is invoked to mean decisions of the Corona Supreme Court, there is already an apparent flaw in logic. Where is it? It is in the assertion that these decisions are beyond question, even if there is already the matter of arbitrary flip-flopping in “final and executory” decisions, the apparent injustices in some, and the apparent bias and partiality in others. In fact, the articles of impeachment accuse CJ Corona (and, by implication, his companions in the majority decisions) of flaunting the Constitution (and therefore the Rule of Law) when he was accused of betrayal of public trust, culpable violation of the Constitution, and graft and corruption.

Precisely, while the legal process may end with the “final and executory” Supreme Court decisions, the impeachment process can still question these decisions politically, exercising as it does its constitutional power to remove unfit justices. By opening the process to the public in a transparent manner, the full weight of public opinion is brought in and become part of the process.

There is no mob rule here, since the constitutional rule still prevails. What the impeachment process did was to lay bare and discounted the myth of judicial infallibility. Thus far, it had already achieved the feat of reminding SC justices that being in the Supreme Court does not endow in them an instant and unchecked power to mangle the Constitution and defy the political will of the people.

At present, that political will is clearly and unequivocally expressed through their election–by a landslide–of Benigno S. Aquino III as the president of the Philippines and by giving him the mandate to pursue justice in the many cases of plunder and electoral fraud by the Macapagal-Arroyo administration. His very high public approval is no accident.

Corona and other Supreme Court justices do not have the benefit of papal infallibility and do not have the direct link to God. God, in this case, has already spoken. Our Constitution clearly pointed where the source of power originates in our democracy: “Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them.”  (Article II, Section 1).

Vox populi, vox dei.