Category: senate

miriam’s hell #cj trial

i am neither anti- nor pro-corona.  if he’s convicted, fine.  if he’s acquitted, fine.  i didn’t like him from the moment he accepted the midnight appointment, but that’s not a high crime, ‘no?

nothing will change, anyway, if corona is removed, except that whoever replaces him will be beholden to the president and his cohorts and not to gma.  and of course there’s the hacienda luisita ruling of the corona court; the cojuangcos would have a good chance of getting the whopping 10B in compensation they want that justice sereno recommends instead of 800M-something lang.  and yes, gma’s goose would be cooked, no matter how weak the evidence of election sabotage against her.

nothing will change either if corona’s not removed, except maybe he’ll inhibit or try very hard from then on to be impartial vis a vis gma cases lest he get impeached again next year.  and that, inhibiting and/or judiciously working at impartiality, would not be a bad thing.

so i am prepared to accept the verdict of the senate impeachment court.  i like it that presiding judge enrile, while bending backward to accommodate an ill-prepared complaint and prosecution, has drawn the line at subpoenaing members of the supreme court and challenging judicial privilege.  while there is much that needs reforming in the judiciary, weakening the institution and rendering it vulnerable/subject to the whims and caprices of the executive and legislative branches that are already too too too powerful would be disastrous for the country in the short-term and in the long run.

of course, there is every possibility that in the end, even if the corona camp were able to mount a credible defense, that the senator-judges would vote still according to their individual political agendas, usually connected to whoever’s in the palace.  pero kanya-kanya nang perception yan, and kanya-kanya ring diskarte, to vote or not to vote for them or their sons / daughters / spouses / siblings, in the next elections.

having said all that, in the spirit of disclosure, here’s my take on senator-judge miriam’s latest lecture that had vitaliano aguirre playing the fool.

i simply cannot find it in my value system to denigrate, condemn, or even criticize senator-judge miriam defensor santiago — as many many anti-corona peeps in social media are doing, waging a hate-miriam campaign, complete with down-dirty cussing ang isa — for lecturing the prosecution and using the words “gago” and “kagaguhan” to characterize how the prosecution has been handling the impeachment case.

neither can i find it in my value system to declare volunteer private prosecutor vitaliano aguirre a hero — as many of these anti-corona peeps are doing, complete with we-are-behind-you graphics – for daring to cover his ears during miriam’s lecture, and when called out, instead of apologizing (as his fellow prosecutors urged), daring to express in no uncertain terms, his contempt for the senator-judge, so to speak, for stridently lecturing the prosecution.

to me it’s clear that these hate-miriam love-aguirre people would be cheering miriam if miriam had been scolding the defense, and they would be angry instead with aguirre for covering his ears if he had been part of that defense.  to me it’s obvious that anti-corona anti-gma peeps are being unreasonable, i suspect out of a real if unspoken fear that corona might be acquitted, either because they have a stake in his conviction or because they have already judged him guilty, like the palace and their favorite media have.

miriam had reason, every time, to lecture the prosecution.  again and again she was provoked by the prosecution’s ineptness and panggagago.  whether or not we like her demeanor or her voice or her language or her scolding style, the prosecution deserved the scolding, every time.

this last, she was scolding the prosecution for dropping five of eight impeachment articles, and they had it coming to them.  to me they were like schoolboys who enrolled in 8 units but “dropped” (that’s the word tupaz used) 5 units kaysa ma-singko, kaysa bumagsak, dahil kulang sa requirements, and then had the gall to cover their ears when scolded by their elders.  kagaguhan indeed.

and no, gago does not mean “stupid.”  “tanga” is the equivalent of “stupid,” and there’s nothing stupid about the prosecutors.  in fact, it takes smarts, craftiness, guile, to be gago, that is, to break rules and brazenly try to get away with it — yan ang panggagago: iniisahan tayo, ginagawa tayong tanga, akala makakalusot sila.  kagaguhan is largely what the prosecution has been up to from the start, railroading, practically overnight, a badly crafted complaint that 188 signatory-reps didn’t even have time to read, and for which they had no evidence.

malaking kagaguhan din ang ginawa ni aguirre.  he was being gago, impertinent, pa-defiant, when he covered his ears in an insolent ploy to attract attention to himself and away from the senator-judge’s lecture.  in any courtroom, especially this one where the fate of a supreme court chief justice is being decided, it is kagaguhan for a prosecutor to consider himself equal to a judge.  the stakes must be so high, he was willing to play the audacious anti-hero, resort to dirty tricks to distract the public from the painful truths that miriam has been revealing about the prosecution.

so really, this front page item on the inquirer quoting cory’s spiritual adviser, that Miriam is ‘worthy of the fires of hell’?  for speaking the truth?  what the hell!  then that goes for me, too.

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No Plan B to fall on by Solita Collas-Monsod
The inane, the insane, the profane Manila Standard Today Editorial
Your Honors… by Alex Magno
The Aquino-LP agenda by Carol Pagaduan-Araullo

presidential backing #cj trial

day 24.  the prosecution’s request that the court subpoena justice ma. lourdes sereno to testify on her dissenting opinion (re the TRO on de lima’s watchlist order) was denied by presiding judge enrile.  senator judge trillanes also withdrew his request of day 23 that justice sereno be sent questions to be answered in writing.  on grounds that it would violate the doctrine of judicial privilege.

prosecutor colmenares pleaded that the feb 14 judicial privilege resolution, effectively forbidding members to testify against each other, was making it difficult for them to get witnesses, and that it might take a subpoena to make justice sereno appear in court.  or something to that effect.

enrile suggested that the prosecution try inviting the justice muna, because what if the senate issued a subpoena and sereno did not comply, then malaking kahihiyan para sa senate court.  and then what?  cite her for contempt?  it would mean a major major clash with a co-equal branch of govt that has the power to declare the senate impeachment court unconstitutional.  or something like that.

senator judge joker arroyo, for his part, expressed amazement at the prosecutor’s statement re difficulty of getting witnesses from the supreme court just because the respondent is the chief justice himself.

“But you have the backing of no less than the President of the Philippines! You should have no problem getting witnesses!”

true.  napa-tweet tuloy ako na medyo uncreative yata ang presidential backing for the prosecution.  kung sa West Wing yan, nagapang na ng palasyo ang mga anti-corona sa supreme court at meron nang nag-surprise witness sa senate court.  kumbaga, ala enrile and ramos nuong EDSA.

or maybe the palace has tried, pero talagang mas matindi lang ang firewall ng supreme court kaysa ng banking system?

as for the abs-cbn cameraman on the justice beat who took videos of sc spokesman midas marquez and of the lawyer topacio & cash, i hope it’s not true that he doesn’t understand what he was covering, not the TRO, not the cash bond, etc.  i hope he was only advised to pretend that he doesn’t understand what’s going on to save him from being grilled by the defense.  otherwise, medyo nakakadismaya for someone who has worked more than a decade in the country’s largest media network.

senators betraying public trust #cj trial

day 15, what a disaster.  i had hoped that if corona were to be impeached, it would happen fairly and squarely, and for a while there i thought the senate was doing a great job, even if it was rather lenient with the bumbling prosecution, even allowing themselves to directly question the witnesses and help make the case.  public’s right to know and all that, up to a point.  but today it was too much.

it’s as though the release of some bank records, illegally obtained at that, have brought out the predator in certain senator-jurors who must be smelling blood and are salivating for more — the dollar accounts, in particular, kasi daw, it would set a bad example for crooks in government who might put their unexplained wealth in dollar accounts, too, now that they know that dollar accounts are sacrosanct.  oh please.  as if naman people who have surplus funds don’t know that already.  and cayetano himself says, it’s a law that can be amended.  then amend it later, i say, than break the law now — enough rules and laws of court are being broken — just to satisfy their bloodlust.

it’s offensive the way these senator-jurors are suddenly behaving as though they were lily white when it comes to undeclared/doctored incomes and real estate property valuations in their SALNs and ITRs, and as if they had no dollar accounts themselves.  come on, sirs, don’t take us all for dolts naman.  and stop using “the people” as an excuse.  i daresay that the way things are going, the people would accept a decision along the lines of: okay, noted, enough-is-enough, move on.  after all there are 7 more articles to go.  or can it be that the 7 other articles are duds?  it’s the bank records or nothing?  bank records that the 188 reps + farinas didn’t even know about when they impeached the chief justice?  wow.  farinas could be right, they’re all in this together.  what a betrayal of public trust.

 

“anonymous source” #cj trial

what goes on kaya behind the closed doors of a senate caucus, especially the one today yesterday where they “refined” the decision to compel bank officials to bring and testify on corona’s bank accounts, with the caveat of course that this is an exception, bank secrecy laws hold.  of course. they also have to be protecting their own interests — they have SALNs and BIR records, plenty properties and huge bank accounts too — but with the second-envelop fiasco on everybody’s mind, they are bending over backward and allowing the prosecution to subpoena practically any and all documents desired, never mind defense objections, para hindi sabihin ng taongbayan na kumakampi sila kay corona at meron silang itinatago o ipinapatago.  a boon to the prosecution.

it’s a highwire act for the senators, keeping a balance, keeping the people out of the streets.  yesterday was tense.  would the senate order that corona’s bank records be subpoenaed or not.  but it was like the decision had been taken out of their hands.  media was already feasting on the juicy details of alleged dollar accounts based on documents provided  the prosecution by an  “anonymous source”.  the senate could not have said no, never mind that that anonymous source is an illegal source.  probably a concerned citizen, said the prosecution lawyer who received the documents.

i wonder about this concerned citizen.  did she act independently?  motivated only by personal anti-corona sentiments?  or did she act upon instructions from someone powerful who’s pulling strings behind-the-scenes?  sana she acted independently.  because if she didn’t, then that’s bad news.  worse even, we’ll probably never know.