Carvajal: Truth, consequence

Saturday, February 11, 2012

IT IS rather unfortunate that Chief Justice Renato Corona’s supporters took to the streets to demand the impeachment trial’s stoppage. Herded and bused into protest mode or not, CJ Corona’s inner core of defenders should have dissuaded these supporters from going into mass action. After all, it is Corona’s camp that has been griping about the prosecution playing to the crowds in the way it presents its case.

It is unfortunate because this action of Corona’s supporters could trigger an opposite and even bigger reaction from a much bigger crowd of citizens who want the truth, especially now that they are seeing a good chunk of it. Chief Justice Corona should not allow his supporters to play the game of numbers because I seriously doubt if he has the numbers. If he thinks he has, he had better think again.

Have something to report? Tell us in text, photos or videos.

Much is said about the technical-legal bungling ways of the prosecution. Yet people are not forgetting that impeachment is not purely judicial it is also, and more so, political. It is sui generis, a one of a kind trial, tasked with finding the truth about CJ Corona’s alleged unworthiness to remain in an office high enough to demand the strictest standards of honesty and integrity.

Nevertheless, for all their technical bungling, the prosecution to me and many non-legal-minded people like me has successfully demonstrated to the public that we have a Chief Justice who did not tell the truth in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN). Moreover, the discrepancy is too substantial as to be considered an omission that can be “corrected in good faith.”

The defense, on the other hand, has sufficiently demonstrated its conviction that the Chief Justice’s salvation lies mainly in preventing, through legal technicalities, the whole truth from coming out. Thus, in desperation, CJ Corona is now asking the Supreme Court to stop his impeachment trial. I am not sure if the Senate would cede to the Supreme Court their constitutionally given mandate to be the ultimate authority on impeachment cases. But one thing is clear that stopping the trial will definitely bury the truth.

This begs the question: Will people accept Corona as chief justice if he is “acquitted” by an aborted trial? Is this country prepared to face the consequences of the people being deprived of the full truth when the partial truth is already so damning?

Timed with their plea for stoppage of the trial is the protest action of supporters. But two can play the game. If the impeachment trial is stopped, is this country ready to face the consequence of people massing in the streets demanding for the truth?

The Chief Justice should be saved by nothing less than the truth. Either that or he resigns now and save the country, and himself, a lot of trouble.