TRIAL
MANILA, FEBRUARY 21, 2012
(INQUIRER) By: Rigoberto Tiglao - Jejomar Binay Jr. is the
political target of President Aquino and the Liberal Party's imperious
blitzkrieg to remove Chief Justice Renato Corona from the Supreme Court, sources
close to the Vice President claimed.
"Everyone knows that the trial is a power game that has nothing to do with an
anti-corruption crusade," one source said. "If Corona is taken out and (senior
Associate Justice Antonio) Carpio becomes chief justice, and with the rest of
the justices terrorized, may laban si Mar maging vice president soon," he said.
Startling as the claim may seem, the facts supporting it are unassailable.
Alleging massive cheating by Binay, vice presidential candidate Mar Roxas
filed an electoral protest in July 2010 with the Presidential Electoral Tribunal
(PET). Roxas alleges that Binay's lead over him of 730,000 votes would have been
wiped out and he would have won by a landslide if the optical-scan counting
machines had not voided 3 million of his votes. The PET has already secured the
ballots in the areas where Roxas claims he was cheated, and its pre-hearing
investigations are underway.
The PET – many have forgotten – is the Supreme Court chaired by Chief Justice
Corona.
If Aquino gets to control the high court, which he will if Corona is taken
out, and with the rest of the justices frightened either by the prospect of
their own impeachment or media demonization, he controls the PET, which would
fast-track Roxas' protest, declare him the winner, and proclaim him the
Republic's vice president.
To prepare public opinion for this, the Ombudsman, assisted by a new member
of the Commission on Audit, would hurl a flurry of graft cases against Binay to
demonize him. This is the real reason, they said, why Aquino's forces removed
Ombudsman Mereditas Gutierrez and replaced her with his favorite justice,
Conchita Carpio-Morales. Morales is a cousin of Justice Carpio, and the law firm
he founded, now the Villaraza Cruz Marcelo & Angangco, is Roxas' counsel for
his electoral protest.
Told that no presidential or vice presidential protest has ever been won, my
source replied: "But never has an administration dared to take out a Chief
Justice, and even more justices if they don't toe its line."
The very recent case of Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo bolsters fears
that the regime can browbeat justices to submission. Despite Corona's ongoing
trial, the House of Representatives' justice committee still rushed Del
Castillo's impeachment February 7. Two days later, the embattled Del Castillo
voted with Carpio and with Aquino's three appointees – Ma. Lourdes Sereno,
Bienvenido Reyes and Estela Perlas-Bernabe – for the Senate to scrutinize
Corona's dollar accounts.
Watch the impeachment trial and it is the four Liberal Party senators who
unabashedly want to prove Corona guilty, even assisting bungling prosecutors.
Check out the people in the campaign to take out Corona, and it is a Liberal
Party production: from party chairman Aquino to vice chairman Franklin Drilon
who has been accused of practically being a prosecutor in the trial, to
executive vice president Feliciano Belmonte, speaker of the House of
Representatives that filed the complaint, to Niel Tupas Jr. head of the
prosecution panel, down to the prosecutors' belligerent spokespersons.
This is not because of the party's servility to Aquino, but because its
future depends entirely on party president Roxas becoming vice president soon,
which will be his jumping board for the 2016 presidency.
But already, Roxas has been marginalized, with Executive Secretary Paquito
Ochoa and his gang having blocked his bid to be a high-profile presidential
chief of staff, and maneuvering him instead into the labyrinthine and
corruption-ridden Department of Transportation and Communications.
When transport prices soar, and they will, Roxas will be the most unpopular
Cabinet member.
The Liberal Party's golden age was, ironically, when Diosdado Macapagal, the
father of Gloria Arroyo whom it has been crucifying, won the presidency in 1961.
After Macapagal, it has been downhill for five decades to near-extinction,
losing consistently in presidential and vice presidential elections, and winning
very few seats in Congress.
It has not been able to produce political leaders with gravitas who could be
presidential timber. Even the new generation of Liberals are hardly poster boys
for a holier-than-thou party: P50-million-mansion-owner Tupas Jr., the obnoxious
prosecution spokesman Miro Quimbo, tainted by the alleged Globe Asiatique
property scam; former deputy customs chief Reynaldo Umali, caught lying with his
fictitious "small-lady-informant" yarn.
Aquino is the first Liberal to win the presidency since Macapagal, but this
was due neither to his personality nor to the Liberal's political prowess, but
because of mass hysteria that Cory Aquino's spirit lives in his son's body.
A Mar Roxas win would have ensured a new, post-Aquino golden age for the
Liberal Party. But he lost, and the Liberals are now trying to move mountains to
reverse his defeat, with Corona's impeachment as the most crucial phase of that
campaign.
As in all major historical events, Corona's trial has its economic element
(to get P10 billion for Hacienda Luisita) and its political dimension (to get
Roxas to be vice president). There is also a personal facet to it.
Corona's term – if he is not taken out – ends October 2018. For senior
Associate Justice Carpio, who was appointed by Arroyo five months before Corona,
the scenario is sheer psychological torture. He will spend seven maddening years
seeing his rival preside over the Court, and when he becomes chief justice, it
will be for only one year, as he retires October 2019.
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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