Understanding impeachment. A school forum was recently held to encourage discourse between the faculty and administrators regarding the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona. Photo by James M. Magalong
IN LIGHT of the ongoing impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, the Office of the Vice President of the Loyola Schools organized a school forum to encourage discussion within the Ateneo faculty and administrators.
“My goal is that people should talk about it, try to figure out where we stand or why we can’t make a stand,” Vice President for the Loyola Schools John Paul Vergara said. “I think encouraging a discussion is more important than anything else, so that we can articulate our reservations about the process… or what we look forward to.”
The school forum, held last February 8 in Escaler Hall, was entitled “The Corona Impeachment: Legal, Political and Media Perspectives.” Former Justice Zenaida Elepaño, lawyer Barry Gutierrez and lawyer Charlie Yu were guest speakers.
Laws not violated
The Political Science department opened the discussion with a question on how or to what extent Philippine laws have been enforced or violated in the impeachment trial. According to Elepaño, the laws, particularly with regards to the separation of powers, have not been violated because the “impeachment is a process constitutionally vested in the Senate.”
Gutierrez added that the reason why many might feel discomfort over the situation is because the Senate is standing in judgment over Corona. As the trial looks into the inner workings of the Supreme Court, they may “discover lies that may threaten judicial independence [and] might weaken the position of the Supreme Court.”
He added that the impeachment is an extraordinary situation as Corona is a high-ranking public official from the judiciary branch, which is considered the “more trustworthy institution to check on the excesses of the [government].”
Gutierrez said however that constitutional order will not be endangered by the impeachment process.
“I think it is a testament to the strength of our constitutional order because we do have a process addressed to check abuses by the institution that we normally look to correct the abuses in government,” he said.
Yu emphasized that the impeachment proceeding is sui generis, which means that the target of the case is Corona the individual and not the Supreme Court as a whole.
End of the political drama
At the beginning of the open forum, a question regarding the end of the impeachment was raised.
“It is difficult [to say how the impeachment will end],” Elepaño said. As a member of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines Impeachment Watch Team, she said that after 14 days of trial, what they see is “an inept prosecution trying to present evidence.”
“I don’t know if they really prepared for this exercise. My guess is that they thought Chief Justice Corona would do a Merceditas Gutierrez and resign before the impeachment proceedings started,” she said.
Elepaño added that although she still cannot say whether the trial will end with an acquittal or a conviction, her personal perception is that the impeachment will result in Corona’s damaged credibility.
“Going over the last three or four weeks of the trial…you can see that there are some pretty damaging evidence,” Gutierrez said. “The question that will be asked is: can the Senate allow the Chief Justice, who at the minimum lied in his SALN (Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth), [and] lied in his income tax returns, to remain [as] Chief Justice?”
“But the question really is, as an ordinary citizen, can you really trust a Chief Justice who will make that kind of omission in an official document…about his finances, what he owes to the government, what he has acquired during his stay in public office? At the end of the day I think a lot of senators will find it very difficult to vote for acquittal, even just looking at what we have in front of us right now,” he said.
But Yu said that before anticipating the end, the entire impeachment process must be looked at first. He said that the reason why the impeachment is slow and “boring” is that it did not undergo a preliminary conference about the process, and that there was no clear definition of terms.
In the shoes of Senator-Judges
The speakers were also asked what they would do if they were the Senator-Judges in the impeachment proceedings.
Elepaño explained that in a regular court, a judge is bound by the evidence presented, and must consider all the evidence before arriving at a conclusion. However, given that the impeachment court is a not a regular civil or administrative case, she said that other factors may be considered.
“I will not only consider the evidence, but I will also consider the issue of whether the person is still fit to continue in office,” she said.
She explained that one must consider what is in the best interest of the people, and decisions should not be confined to the evidence presented in court.
“The principal issue is, is this person still fit to continue in office, or should this person be removed? That is the essence of public accountability,” she added.
Gutierrez said that as eleven of the senator-judges are not lawyers, it cannot be expected that they would weigh the evidence in a way that legal professionals would be able to do so.
“[The impeachment] is an extraordinary check on official abuse, which leads to the removal of the person from office,” Gutierrez said. “It is not a criminal proceeding. He won’t be jailed [nor] fined…his properties, even if they are shown to be illegally acquired or undeclared, won’t be seized by the Senate.”
“He will simply be removed from office and disqualified [perpetually] from holding any other public office…which I suppose attests to the character of the impeachment as being principally a mechanism for insuring that full faith and confidence is vested in the people that we appoint or elect to the highest offices available in our system of government,” he said.
