Honeyman: Nolo Contendere Corona

Monday, February 6, 2012

THE president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma has, in the context of the CJ Corona impeachment trial, asked the nation to: do whatever is legally and morally possible that truth and justice will be attained I suppose this means that he would like the national conversation on the trial to remain vigorous and well-informed. Agreed. But the vast majority, whose energies are consumed with the problems of earning enough to meet daily needs, cannot be expected to continue to have the energy or interest to absorb the day-to-day minutiae of the case.

In an excellent interview with Representative Neri Colmenares last week, Sun.Star Bacolod illuminated the problems experienced by Representative Niel Tupas et al in bringing a crisp and cogent case to which the defense, hopefully, would make a vigorous response. Colmenares complained of obstructionist defense tactics in which all documents, even those in the public domain, have to be tediously authenticated by witnesses, normally senior administrative civil servants who should have better things to do.

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It is regrettable that the Senator Judges have to sit through these proceedings.

Over the past few weeks, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) has made various pronouncements. We consider that it would not it would not be inappropriate for the IBP to make observations as to whether it approves or disapproves of the trial's conduct. What is clear from my conversation with friends is that, as far as the community is concerned, the legal profession itself is being judged. Acerbic comments are becoming common place.

CBCP's Palma also wants us to give our respect to the Senator-judges and to respect and trust the constitutional processes. Again, we agree.

Given the propensity of both the prosecution and the defense to talk to the media, and given that the defense has not been clear that the Coronas funding of their property purchases has come from legitimate, declared incomes, we wonder whether nolo contendere plea should be made.

Nolo Contendere, literally I do not wish to contend is a plea by which a defendant accepts conviction as though a guilty plea has been entered but does not admit guilt.

Unorthodox? Yes, but the impeachment of the Chief Justice is a unique event. A solution needs to be found. The longer the case goes on, the more the Supreme Court (SC) will be in tatters and, indeed the whole Judicial Branch will be chronically damaged. The CBCP, quite reasonably, asks for an expeditious resolution of the trial so that the nation can return to normalcy.

The SC is already being disrespected. Contempt of court is no longer an aberration but is becoming standard.

The PEACe Bonds case is an example. In 2001, the government issued P10 billion worth of bonds to favored financial institutions who would then receive P35 billion in 2011. But when the due date came, BIR withheld P5 billion in the form of a 20% withholding tax on the capital gain.

In what is an amazingly simple case, the SC called a time out aka Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) and also instructed the BIR to put the disputed P5 billion into an escrow account held by the banks.

BIR Commissioner Kim Henares, whose homely appearance and relentlessly polite, even deferential, behavior as an impeachment trial witness, demurred. In fact, she has given the SC the metaphorical dirty finger.

Why the TRO? So, the unkind ones say, as to give the banks time to lobby the SC for a favorable verdict. Since P5 billion is at stake then, according to the cynics, the lobbying is accompanied by substantial inducements. Enough to enable any Associate Justice to live at Bellagio or other seemingly jerry-built ghettos for the rich and infamous.

But the system has broken down.

BIR has undisguised contempt for the SC. BIR will never release the P5 billion and we, the public, would never forgive BIR if it did.

The SC should give up. Instead, it could seek evidence from the BIR and/or Commission on Audit as to what possessed the government to issue bonds to its friendly financial institutions which would turn P10 billion into P35 billion in ten years. Then we would start to see a Judicial Branch which is worthy of the Filipino people. At present, its performance is pathetic.

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K to 12

In October 2010, DepEd explained, in outline, how its K-12 scheme would work. Reactions were largely negative.

Now, more detailed proposals are being put forward and reactions are more negative. DepEd Sec Armin Luistro may have the ear of the President but he does not have ours. If we are in any sense The Boss, Luistro needs to go back to the drawing board.

The world of academe has its own jargon. To us this jargon often used to hide behind concepts that are trivial, superficial, or even bogus.

Academics claim an integration with the community that just is not there. An important area is the interaction between the academic domain and the world of work. A feature of K to 12 will be that students will spend vast amounts of time supposedly on on the job training or OJT. This usually means students doing the most menial of tasks – endless sweeping of floors, washing dishes, cleaning toilets for example whereas the theory is that students gain useful practical experience which underpins what they have learned at their school. Academic and technical institutions do not closely monitor what is going on with their students experiencing industrial placement.

Luistro talks about holistic education. This was an idea which I encountered twelve years ago when I was a LaSallian parent. Holistic education as I experienced it was empty. It simply meant that the key fundamentals of various subjects were ignored and replaced by the trivial, the superficial and, above all, the showy.

Now Luistro wants to inflict a La Sallian culture on the whole nation. It is a waste of public money.

Specifically, DepEd wants to decongest the curriculum. This means that students will spend six years in high school doing what they currently do in four. The additional two years is wasted. In other countries, the final two years of high school education takes students to levels that will not be achieved here. Why not? We do not have the teachers with the required knowledge.

Insufficient thought has been given to implementation. Initial potential victims of K to 12 are those students who are currently in the final year of grade school grade 6. Before K to 12 they would have gone to High School and, all being well, would graduate in April 2016. Now it will take until 2018 to reach the same level.

What of the tertiary education sector? Are UP/UST etc going to suddenly stop recruiting students to commence university courses in June 2016 and June 2017 so as to accommodate K-12 implementation? I do not think so. University entrance examinations, notably at UP, are designed to assess whether students would benefit from a UP education. In other words, the exams are trying to determine a student's potential rather than what they currently know.

We need DepEd to improve the quality, not the quantity, of education.