I was a front seat witness to the impeachment proceedings of the late Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012. Matter of fact, I was an “accidental participant” of the Corona defense team led by the late Justice Serafin Cuevas. A bit bizarre as well because of my closeness to JPE who was the Senate President and Presiding Officer of the impeachment court.
But that was then, and a majority of the Senator-Jurors voted to convict the late Chief Justice. Only one Senator then who voted to acquit him still remains with us. As a matter of fact, he is no less than President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.
The two others namely Senator Joker Arroyo and Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago have now gone to the great beyond. The Corona impeachment drew much attention across the nation as the highest magistrate of the land was, ironically so, under legal scrutiny.
In the end, CJ Corona was convicted by a majority vote for a much lesser crime compared to the seven articles of impeachment of the current Vice-President.
If Corona would be barred from holding any public office in the future for his dishonesty with his SALN, how much more for Duterte who even contracted a would-be assassin to liquidate a President and his wife the First lady, and the Speaker of the House.
And to add the illegal handling of confidential funds disbursed to silly-sounding names right out of a high school cafeteria menu. For one, the behavior of a sitting Vice-President shows what kind of President she will be in the event that fate grants her a chance for the coveted throne.
Sara Duterte is no saintly Mother Teresa nor a wanna-be-saint (not!) Cory Aquino, but neither is she a Golda Meir or a Margaret Thatcher. Not born with a silver spoon but with a gold-plated spade she can use to bury the enemies of her state.
What am I trying to say here? She can be a dangerous leader once gifted with enormous powers and can catapult the nation towards a civil war. Corona on the other hand was as meek as a lamb, that is why his enemies pounced on him, like waiting hyenas on a helpless prey.
If you recall just a few months back, Sara Duterte said it was too early then to consider resigning her post which may preempt the impeachment and preserve her ability to run for President in 2028.
Nonetheless, she claims she is ready to fight it out in the Senate impeachment court with her legal team as she plans to clear her name from all the allegations and accusations of impropriety and misbehaving crookedness.
Today, thirteen years after the impeachment of Renato Corona, Sara Duterte will be facing a variety of Senators-turned-Jurors to look into the evidence against her. Surely, she will be donning her usual arrogant behavior that, unlike Corona, would solicit the ire of good-natured Filipinos who want nothing but the truth to be revealed.
One cannot also help but make a comparison between Juan Ponce Enrile and Francis Escudero as Presiding Officers of the impeachment court.
The former showed nothing less than a sterling performance as a brilliant lawyer who was in control of the proceedings from beginning to finish, while the latter reminds me of a cyborg having a conversation with you on a monotone level without a heart (well, not really).
JPE owed nobody anything but was simply after the truth, and I will always doff my hat to him, a living repository of the nation’s history and politics. And it’s also good to know that the only surviving Senator-Juror who voted to acquit the Chief Justice is now the President.
And, as Corona was impeached for a lesser crime, perhaps his ghost now haunts Sara Duterte incessantly while inducing her to finally speak the truth.
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Random Memorandum: Former Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez was impeached on March 22, 2011 on charges of the office’s underperformance and failure to act on several cases during former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s administration. The first impeachment complaint against Gutierrez was filed in 2009, but was dismissed later that same year in a House dominated by FPGMA’s Lakas-Kampi-CMD party.
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Factoid: Former Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos was accused in the ZTE National Broadband Network (NBN) deal and the ‘Hello Garci’ scandal, but resigned eventually to evade further humiliation and shame.
(Leslie Bocobo is a former Director and Special Assistant to the Secretary at the Office of the Press Secretary, Malacañang, and a former Public Affairs Director of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources)
Email: sleeplessinmyshuttle@yahoo.com
