THE PROSECUTION
MANILA, FEBRUARY 12, 2012 (MANILA TIMES) Written by BY RENE Q. BAS
EDITOR IN CHIEF AND JEFF ANTIPORDA REPORTER - SEN. Franklin Drilon of Iloilo is
a former Senate President. As vice-chairman of the Liberal Party, he works
closely with the chairman, who is no less than the President of the Philippines,
Benigno Cojuangco Aquino 3rd, and the other vice-chairman of the party, Speaker
Feliciano Belmonte.
Sen. Drilon, as one of the senator-judges in the Impeachment Court trying
Chief Justice Renato Corona, has become the darling of that portion of the
masses (estimated to be 70 percent of the population) who idolize President
Aquino.
According to surveys, they approve everything that the President does and
wishes to happen. The President wants Chief Justice Corona to be convicted.
He has spoken in public of his desire to see the Chief Justice found guilty.
He has been calling on CJ Corona to resign.
Senator-Judge Drilon has also been heard saying that he believes that Mr.
Corona is guilty of the charges against him.
No one is therefore surprised to see Mr. Drilon in the Impeachment Court
doing everything he can to help the prosecution. The prosecution lawyers have
been seen to be inept and unprepared a lot of times.
Some people believe that the Impeachment Court's justices should be impartial
and behave like real ideal justices.
Among such high-minded persons are a number of senator-judges themselves,
most of all Impeachment Court Presiding Judge Juan Ponce Enrile. Sen. Enrile's
statement at the opening of the trial is a stirring call on his colleagues for
impartiality, for the court's search for the truth to be guided by the highest
standards.
He reminded his fellow senators that as jurors, they have the "obligation and
responsibility to closely and diligently examine the evidence and the facts to
be presented before [them], to determine whether such evidence and facts
sufficiently and convincingly support the charges, and ultimately, to decide the
fate of no less than the Chief Justice of the Highest Court of the land, and the
head of a co-equal branch of our government."
Enrile reminded the senator-judges on Day One of the trial that theirs, a
unique task mandated by the Constitution, "is a grave and serious
responsibility."
He said: "While it has often been said that, by and large, the trial in an
impeachment case is political in nature, nonetheless, such is neither an excuse
nor a license for us to ignore and abandon our solemn and higher obligation and
responsibility as a body of jurors to see to it that the Bill of Rights is
observed and that justice is served, and to conduct the trial with impartiality
and fairness, to hear the case with a clear and open mind, to weigh carefully in
the scale the evidence against the respondent, and to render to him a just
verdict based on no other consideration than our Constitution and laws, the
facts presented to us, and our individual moral conviction."
For sure some of the 188 congressmen who signed and therefore co-authored the
impeachment complaint against the Chief Justice must have found Presiding-Judge
Enrile's patriotic and moral admonitions laughable. They had verified the
impeachment complaint and sworn to their personal knowledge of the accusations
against Mr. Corona. But the truth is that they had not read it. From the very
start, in the august halls of the House of Representatives, they had joined the
Corona impeachment drama as principal players with dishonesty in their hearts
and minds.
That must be the real reason why the performance of the prosecution has been
marked by sheer buffoonery.
But it is just this situation that created the opportunity for Senator-Judge
Franklin Drilon to emerge in the role of the savior of the prosecution.
Several times Mr. Drilon had to make an intervention to cajole witnesses into
speaking out words the prosecution lawyers had failed to draw out. This has been
the marked role of Mr. Drilon these past 15 trial-hearing days that a prominent
radio-TV anchor has made it his comic turn to refer to Mr. Drilon as
"Judge-Prosecutor."
But the Senator-Judge from Iloilo in his hearts of hearts believes that what
he is doing is in the service of the truth.
Which is why he assiduously wants to make witnesses tell all, even when they
are complaining that they should not be pressured into breaking the law.
Some fear that disclosing the minute detail, to secure the conviction of a
notorious criminal or to solve a nagging national problem, must not be done if
doing so could destroy something more essential to our nation and society.
Here are 251 wise words, paragraphs from the Inquirer column last Thursday,
titled "Rules are not made to be broken," by that most insightful and profound
commentator, Raul C. Pangalangan:
"…This historic impeachment will reinforce or destroy rules that will bind us
long after Chief Justice Renato Corona's tenure ends.
"We love the stance of the partisan or advocate who wants the quick score for
his client right here, right now. But the Senate sits as judge. Not for it the
narrow and short-term agenda of the partisan, but the high moral road,
broad-minded and with depth of conscience. For them, the battle over subpoenas
shouldn't be a barren contest over technicalities.
"Rules of evidence are not just about finding the truth. They actually
balance the pursuit of the truth against other values: husband-wife and
parent-child confidentiality; bank secrecy and the reliability of our banking
system; the separation of powers scheme in our system of government.
Whoever says 'the truth must come out whatever the cost' still needs to
explain what outweighs that cost: the erosion of family and love, the risk of a
bank run, or the short-circuiting of constitutional checks and balances.
"In traditional constitutional law, we call this the logic of
'pre-commitment.' We bind ourselves in advance to certain rules so that, faced
with the temptings of the moment, of 'hydraulic pressures' that bear on the here
and now, we do not lose sight of larger principles, distant, yes, but more
enduring. In the classic words of Benjamin Cardozo, we have constitutions
precisely to protect us 'against the assaults of opportunism, the expediency of
the passing hour… the derision of those who have no patience with general
principles.' "
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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