Renato Corona is a giant of a man. He towers above practically all whom he talks to. He’s easily over 200 pounds, perhaps 230, 240. His full crop of hair and his taut and smooth face belie his 63 years. He walks with an awkward gait, like one who treads a bed of hot coal or of broken glass, the result of a back operation.
This huge man has fallen hard. Up until a couple of weeks ago he was the most powerful judge in the Philippines, he was the Chief Justice. Now he’s out of a job.
Last May 29, the Philippine Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, adjudged Corona unfit to remain as the nation’s chief magistrate. That, for hiding US$2.4 million (equivalent to more than 100 million pesos) and P80 million in secret bank accounts, which is against the law because he didn’t declare it as required.
Today Corona is not only not chief justice anymore, he’s forever barred from holding any public office. And he’s not off the hook yet, he can still be prosecuted and jailed for owning ill-gotten wealth and tax evasion, if prosecutors can prove that in court. Ill-gotten wealth is defined as having money that is not commensurate to one’s legal income.
It’s been a spectacular fall from grace.
Corona used to be a bright star in the legal and governmental firmament in the Philippines. He went to fine schools and, after a stint in the private sector, hitched his career on to that of another ambitious public personality who seemed destined for grander things. That person was Gloria Arroyo, daughter of a former President who had ambitions of duplicating her father’s feat by becoming President herself. It was an objective that she would achieve through several twists of fate.
Corona was chief of staff to then-Vice President Arroyo. Arroyo did ascend to the presidency (by accident, after the ouster of President Joseph Estrada in a popular civilian revolt). Corona stayed close to Mrs. Arroyo and served her in different capacities. Later, she appointed him associate justice on the Supreme Court. By all accounts, Corona had personal success firmly in hand.
Meanwhile, Arroyo’s own journey through history would find her in all sorts of trouble. Her election victory became controversial and shrouded in doubt after a telephone conversation between her and an election official leaked out, making it apparent that she was involved in rigging the election. Already unpopular at that point, Mrs. Arroyo will further sink in the people’s acceptance because of several financial and political controversies that tended to show her corrupt nature and Machiavellian machinations. She exited the scene with her credibility and reputation in tatters.
One of her last official acts before leaving the presidency would put Justice Corona in a tight spot. She appointed him Chief Justice during a period when such an appointment was illegal. This was after a new President (Benigno Aquino III) had already been elected and, by tradition and courtesy, all appointments are left for the new chief executive to make.
The Supreme Court bent the law and allowed the “midnight” appointment of Corona as Chief Justice.
But President-elect Aquino would not accept Corona’s appointment and vowed not to recognize him as the new Chief Justice. Aquino even went to the extent of asking another Supreme Court justice to administer his inaugural oath, a ceremonial task normally reserved for the Chief Justice.
Still, that presidential snub would land in the bin of history as just another incident in the political life of the nation and, it seemed, that was that.
But it would turn out to be a pivotal event in history. Corona’s slow professional demise was then beginning.
Ensuing Supreme Court decisions would further irritate President Aquino because they tended to favor Corona’s patroness, Gloria Arroyo who, by then, already had a string of cases being lodged against her and was in dire danger of finding herself in jail for her alleged crimes in office. (Currently, Arroyo is under arrest on a charge of electoral sabotage.)
Aquino saw Corona as a stumbling block to his agenda of reforms and, when his patience ran out, he ordered his congressional allies to exact the ultimate punishment for certain high officials — impeach Corona and kick him out of office!
On Dec. 12, 2011 the House of Representatives did impeach Corona, on the strength of the signatures of 188 congressmen, a number that was a lot more than the required two-thirds vote to impeach. On Jan. 16, 2012, Corona’s trial commenced.
The trial would feature bumbling congressmen (and women) as prosecutors, courtroom-savvy private lawyers out to rescue Corona’s judicial career, and temperamental senators (acting as judges) that would provide serio-comic entertainment to the public. It took five months to finish the trial. By then, courtroom and viewing fatigue was already weighing heavily on both the impeachment protagonists and the public.
The trial would take the courtroom actors and the public to a tortuous journey of highs and lows, ups and downs, and elation and disappointment. The sessions took place Mondays-Thursdays, and the long weekend break was too much to bear for those who had by then become impeachment junkies.
The characters in the trial showed the best and worst of Philippine politicians. Everybody, including media pundits, showed their biases in favor or against Corona and Aquino. Some of the antics in the courtroom were funny, some painful to watch, and still others embarrassing and insulting to discerning Filipinos.
One senator in particular displayed uniquely bizarre behavior which was truly embarrassing (not for her but for us). But I will not soil this column by commenting further about her antics, it’s enough that you know her gender, which makes it easy to guess who she is.
In the end, Corona, the nation’s chief magistrate, couldn’t save himself from the ultimate humiliation, removal from office through impeachment. The country’s foremost arbiter of what is fair and just in law couldn’t defend himself credibly enough to persuade the senators to spare him conviction.
The highest goal of a lawyer is to become chief justice, just as the ultimate honor for a citizen is to become president of his nation. The lowest depth into which a lawyer could fall is the nadir of impeachment and conviction.
It is thus there where today Renato Corona has plunged, the deepest chasm for a lawyer-judge. Three factors sealed his fate at the impeachment court. First, a chief justice, being the nation’s highest magistrate, must be totally clean and above reproach. Corona, for all his intelligence and supposed mastery of the law, failed to prove his probity. Second, the fact that a lowly court employee was years ago fired because of the same offense the chief justice found himself accused of. And third, when he walked out of the impeachment court after a three-hour-long “opening statement,” he practically sealed his own fate by his own action. By insulting the court by his rudeness, he surely persuaded several senators to vote for his conviction. Proof of this is that senators crossed party lines and voted overwhelmingly, 20-3, to oust Corona.
Corona is a huge man. But, in the end, this giant of a man proved to be a moral pygmy. His ethics were questionable. He was not above claiming academic honors even though they weren’t true (shades of dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s fake war medals!).
The towering figure is really a small man. He is just someone ordinary, susceptible, like many of us, to the seductiveness of luxury (even the lure of a discount on a condo purchase), and the perks of power. He claimed in court a spartan life and yet he was known to have ordered and claimed as official expense a P25,000 barong Tagalog. Many of his statements in court were disbelieved because they defied simple logic and normal human experience.
Incidentally, and tellingly, on the first day of trial the prosecution team to a man (and woman) wore the traditional barong Tagalog while the defense wore suits. This seemed to indicate their respective orientations and even nationalistic tendencies, or even as to who the good guys and the bad guys were. But this didn’t seem to dawn on the defense lawyers. Why? Because on the fateful last day of the trial, the same tableau was again there for all to see: the prosecution team wore barongs. And the defense? You guessed it, suits!
Corona should not have accepted an appointment that was patently illegal. But he had to, because he was supposed to be the judicial protector of Gloria Arroyo. Sad for him, the controversial appointment caused him his downfall.
Corona turned out to be just an ordinary man put in an extraordinary position. In the end, he was not up to the lofty position upon which his benefactress installed him. Ironically, while his star has fallen, the firmament is so much brighter without it.
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Postscript on Jessica. So Jessica Sanchez isn’t the American Idol. But we all know that was the result of demographics, the American public prefers a bland style. We know that Jessica is the more inventive and stylish singer. She’ll go places. Some supporters of Jessica doubted the true results and wanted the contest’s votes revealed. We are all Jessica fans but there’s no need for that. Ever since the US government probed and exposed the rigging of the results of a television quiz show in the 1950s (60s?), that kind of practice doesn’t take place anymore. Players in professional sports have been convicted for throwing games but there hasn’t been a national-level case involving organizers and promoters. So there.
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