FUROR OVER CORONA SALNs
MANILA, JANUARY
24,
2012 (STANDARD) by Rey E. Requejo - CHIEF
Justice Renato Corona on Friday rejected insinuations that he had acquired
assets through illegal means and put them under his wife's and children's names.
It would have been "careless and stupid" of him to do so, he said.
House prosecutors had claimed earlier this week that Corona failed to declare
all his property in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth. They
presented several witnesses who claimed he owned pieces of property in Taguig
City and Quezon City.
Among those who took the witness stand to provide the documents of Corona's
supposed real estate assets were register of deeds Sedfrey Garcia of Marikina,
Carlo Alcantara of Quezon City, Randy Rutaquiao of Taguig, and Constante Caluya
Jr. of Makati.
The prosecutors claimed that the documents were for property that Corona had
acquired illegally, a claim he denied.
During the impeachment hearing Thursday, Corona's counsel, retired Justice
Serafin Cuevas, questioned the relevance of the land titles to Article 2 of the
impeachment complaint, which accuses Corona of failing to file his statement of
assets, liabilities and net worth.
Cuevas said the titles were not connected with the issue of Corona's
statements of assets, "but a different aspect of impeachment regarding illegally
acquired wealth, to which we have a standing objection."
The House prosecution panel earlier said the titles were material to the
impeachment case.
On Friday, President Benigno Aquino III accused Corona of using "squid
tactics" and deflecting the public's attention from the impeachment proceedings
by bringing up the Hacienda Luisita issue.
"He should just answer the issues leveled against him. That is what experts
call squid tactics," Mr. Aquino said.
"What is the connection of Hacienda Luisita to his impeachment? He was being
asked if he [had] filed his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net worth, and
if had disclosed this publicly. He should have just said yes, it was filed on
this date and it came out in this publication, meeting the public disclosure
requirement of the Constitution."
Corona had earlier bared a conspiracy against him by three powerful people
whom he did not name, but he clearly referred to President Aquino as one of
them, whom he said did not wish the land in his family-owned Hacienda Luisita
distributed to farmers as ordered by the Supreme Court.
Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda claims that Corona's conspiracy theory
is "a desperate ploy" to deflect attention from himself.
Mr. Aquino on Friday expressed confidence that the House prosecution team
would perform better after drawing criticism for their lackluster performance.
"I believe in the coming days our panel will show how good they really are,"
he said.
The watchdogs in the impeachment trial are questioning the prosecution's
claim that proving the discrepancies between Corona's actual assets and the
assets he disclosed in his statements of assets, liabilities and net worth will
be enough to convict him.
The Integrated Bar of the Philippines, which has put up an "impeachment
watch," said the burden of the prosecution was beyond proving that the chief
justice's salary was not commensurate to the property he owned.
"Under the law on ill-gotten or unexplained wealth, it is not only the salary
but also 'other lawful income' that is considered in explaining whether the
wealth acquired by an official is not commensurate or is unexplained," said
group spokesman and Northern Luzon Gov. Dennis Habawel.
The Prosecutors claimed in Thursday's hearing that Corona did not declare
some property and understated the value of the others.
They questioned why the 303-square-meter unit at the Bellagio Tower in
Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, that Corona and his wife Cristina acquired in
2009 for P14.5 million was not in the chief magistrate's 2010 statement of
assets and liabilities, which declared assets of P22.9 million and no
liabilities.
Corona's assets include a condominium unit in Taguig City that was acquired
in 2004 on installment with an assessed value of P1.4 million and a "current
fair market value" of P2.4 million.
He has a second Taguig condominium unit acquired in 2010 on installment with
an assessed value of P3.5 million and a market value of P6.8 million, but it
wasn't clear if this was the Bellagio Tower unit. With Joyce
Pangco Pañares
FROM THE INQUIRER
Furor over the Corona SALNs By: Fr. Joaquin G.
Bernas S. J. Philippine Daily Inquirer1:01 am | Monday, January 23rd, 2012
On the third day of the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato
Corona, the Supreme Court clerk of court, appearing as a witness summoned by the
prosecution, found herself trapped between, as it were, the devil and the deep
blue sea. Commanded by the Senate jury to produce the statements of assets,
liabilities and net worth (SALNs) of Chief Justice Corona, which she admitted
she had brought with her, the clerk of court balked and asked for time to get
authority from the Supreme Court to release the document. She said that by the
Rules of Court she could not release it on her own. Who should the clerk of
court obey, the Supreme Court or the Senate jury?
The story begins with a provision in the Constitution requiring that the
SALNs of certain high-ranking public officials, including justices of the
Supreme Court, "shall be disclosed to the public in the manner provided by law."
The manner provided by law, i.e., by Republic Act 6713, is that Supreme Court
justices should file their SALNs with the clerk of court. RA 6713, moreover,
requires that the SALNs should be open for inspection and copying by interested
parties.
However, occasioned by the request of a private party litigant for the SALNs
of justices of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court in 1989 issued a resolution
directing that such requests should be granted only for legitimate and
justifiable reason. The Court was concerned that the unregulated release of
SALNs could endanger the independence of the Judiciary.
Since then the practice has been that when a request for the SALN of a
Supreme Court justice is sought, the matter is included by the clerk of court in
the agenda for the weekly en banc meeting of the Court. According to the clerk
of court, this has happened only nine or 10 times since 1989, and it has never
occasioned controversy.
This too is how the subpoena for the SALNs of Chief Justice Corona was
handled. Unfortunately, however, the Court meets en banc only every Tuesday,
which meant that the clerk of court had to wait for a week. Must the Senate also
wait?
Incidentally, this is not a question of who, between the Senate jury and the
Supreme Court, is superior. After all, the Senate jury is no other than the same
upper house of Congress. The Senate jury is not a distinct body from the Senate
but is the same Senate given non-legislative authority to be exercised
occasionally. The three departments of government are coequal, working in
coordination with each other. When faced with a situation in which they seem to
appear to be an immovable force pushing against an immovable wall, what is
constitutionally demanded of them is to look for ways of working together. This
is what happened here. The clerk of court surrendered the documents with the
assurance that she would face no censure from the Supreme Court.
It is also worth noting that access to matters of public interest, including
government documents, is a right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. However,
jurisprudence says that this right does not mean that every day is an open house
in public offices. The custodian of the document has the inherent power to
regulate the manner of access to these documents. But there are instances when
the custodian, for some other reason, may deny access to the documents. In such
situations the remedy that has been used is to file a petition for mandamus in
court. In fact, it is partly for the purpose of facilitating access to documents
without the hassle of having to go to court that there is now pending in
Congress a Freedom of Information bill.
But note that the demand for the SALNs of Corona already came from a court,
that is, from the Senate exercising the powers of an impeachment court. The
impeachment court itself should be in a position to determine whether the demand
for a SALN and its use would be for a legitimate purpose. The impeachment court
said it was and, happily, the clerk of court honored its demand.
The pending request for a TRO. There are still pending in the Supreme Court
petitions for a TRO to restrain the Senate from proceeding with the impeachment
trial on the ground that the impeachment complaint filed by the House of
Representatives is invalid. The petition is asking for an order which would
place the Supreme Court in direct collision with the Senate because the Senate
jury already decided last Monday that the complaint was valid. In my view this
is a correct decision of the Senate. The core of the issue is whether at least
one-third of the House verified their complaint. The record of the House says
that every single one of the 188 complainants came before the secretary general
of the House to verify their complaint. The Senate jury, at least out of
inter-house courtesy, did not question the veracity of the House record. It
would have been different if at least the Speaker of the House had denied its
veracity. I strongly doubt that the Supreme Court, at least out of
interdepartmental courtesy, will question the veracity of the House
record—especially since the impeachment trial is already in full gear.
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
All
rights reserved
PHILIPPINE
HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE [PHNO] WEBSITE
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