Category: supreme court

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.

corona impeachment: let’s hear it all, prosecution AND defense!

i like it that chief justice corona is not resigning, instead will face trial in the senate.  it would be good for us all, since phnoy has seen fit to get him impeached by the house of reps, to see due process taking its course, whether toward an acquittal or convicton.  i hope corona does not change his mind over the holidays.

i still remember erap’s trial, all the dirt and rot that surfaced, and the named names, which i suspect was the underlying reason for the representatives-prosecutors’ pouncing on the second-envelope fiasco, any excuse to walk out before the defense could be heard, which may also be the reason certain quarters would prefer that corona do a merceditas na lang?

please lang, no walk-outs, let us hear it all, prosecution AND defense!

meanwhile, listening to lacierda lash back at corona after the latter’s address to the nation only makes me wonder/wander back to why phnoy has gotten so ballistic.  he got his way, after all, on holding gma in the country and getting her arrested (in another blitzkrieg process).  kinda creative naman sila pag gitgitan na.

read Hell to the Chief by Theodore Te on move.ph

armida: what if, people power vs SC

read armida siguion-reyna‘s What people want.  she ends with thoughts of people power.

I’ve been told there are lawyers invoking “the rule of law” and the Philippine Constitution, and I understand where they’re coming from. But, and this is a big but for me, what about the rule of justice? What about what people want? Is the law bigger than the people’s will?

When Corazon Aquino took her oath of office as 11th President of the Philippines, Filipinos generally did not demand for a recount of the ballots cast in the 1986 snap elections because four days of revolutionary people power took precedence over legally cast ballots. Marcos loyalists believed that it was still Marcos who won the vote, pero ang kagustuhan ng lumabas na nakararaming taong-bayan sa Edsa I ang namayani, naluklok si Cory bilang pangulo.

When Gloria Arroyo pledged allegiance on the Bible held by then Supreme Court Justice Hilario Davide Jr., with a crowd much, much lesser than the first Edsa, the duo combined to make legal her ascent into the presidency, kesyo President Estrada had by then already resigned and by that resignation rendered the Office of the Chief Executive vacant, kesyo this, kesyo that. Napamukha nilang legal ang illegal and thus managed to overrule the gargantuan mass that made up Edsa III, much, much bigger than what passed off as Edsa II.

Exactly how many times was the law twisted and flouted to make the nation believe that Arroyo won over Fernando Poe Jr. in 2004? Only God in heaven knows. Still, even without knowing for sure how often the woman has manipulated legalities, the law cannot be bigger than the people’s will.

Bakit hindi magtawag ng tao, sa Edsa kung sa Edsa. Sa Luneta, kung sa Luneta, sa kahit saan, para sagutin ang tanong: Gusto n’yo bang makulong si Gloria Arroyo?

And my goodness, if people come in droves, if, say, two million show up, how can the Supreme Court (SC) overrule so clear a manifestation of popular will? If in the past, fewer numbers installed presidents, surely much larger figures can jail another.

It’s what the people want that matters, it’s the spirit of the law that must prevail over what’s legal or made to appear legal, as here in this case it doesn’t matter who has got more evidence or less of it. Basta’t come hell or high water, eight in the SC will always vote for Arroyo wrong or right, and only five will go against her.

This, unless people power’s truly dead and gone.