 All public officers are required to file their Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth on or before 30 April of every year. This is provided by RA No. 6713, otherwise known as the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees. The rationale for the filing of the same is to enable the public to find out if there has been an appreciable increase in the net worth of a public officer on a year-to-year basis. In turn, under the provisions of the Unexplained Wealth Act, any property that appears to be disproportionate to the annual salary of a public officer is prima facie presumed to be ill gotten and is subject to forfeiture in favor of the state. This is one very rare instance where the law presumes property of a public officer as ill-gotten. Cleary, the requirement to file the SALN is complimentary to the intent of the law to deprive pubic officers of the fruits of graft and other corrupt practices. It is a tool to determine if the net worth of a public officer is within his means as a public officer.I am sure that this is why the prosecution panel in the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona decided to begin introduction of their evidence on Article 2 instead of Article 1 of the impeachment complaint. Stated differently, since the public prosecutors have told the nation that the Chief Justice has very valuable real estate registered in his name, property whose value appears to be beyond his annual income as an Associate Justice and later, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, these may be deemed ill-gotten. One of the grounds for the Chief Justice’s impeachment, in turn, is graft and corruption.Moreover, the filing of the same is mandatory and required to be under oath. Any failure to file the same, or a failure to declare all assets owned by the public officer in the same, will amount to a violation of a public officer’s duty to uphold the laws of the land. This is also betrayal of the public trust. This is because a public office is a public trust and a public officer’s breach of an existing law is also a breach of the trust reposed in the public officer.
The Constitution further requires that the SALN “shall be disclosed to the public in the manner provided by law.” RA 6713 provides for the manner of public disclosure of a public officer’s SALN. Section 8(C) of said law provides: “(C) Accessibility of documents. — (1) Any and all statements filed under this Act, shall be made available for inspection at reasonable hours. x x x“(2) Such statements shall be made available for copying or reproduction after ten (10) working days from the time they are filed as required by law. x x x (4) Any statement filed under this Act shall be available to the public for a period of ten (10) years after receipt of the statement.” The crux of the controversy is while the Chief Justice maintains that he has filed his SALN according to law, no one, except for the Court Clerk of Court, has seen them. This is because in an attempt to guard against harassment, the Court, by an en banc resolution, has ruled that these SALN should not be made public and will only be released on “good grounds.” A legal issue to be resolved by the Impeachment Court is whether the Chief Justice, relying on a court resolution, can claim immunity from Section 8C of the law as quoted above. The House prosecutors obviously believe that he cannot and the refusal to make such SALN public is already a violation of the law — hence, an impeachable offense, that of betrayal of public trust. Corona maintains otherwise. But a startling event happened yesterday when the Clerk of Court of the Supreme Court refused to turn over Corona’s SALN to the Senate despite a subpoena issued for them. Obviously, much of Article 2 of the impeachment complaint may be proven by the production of Corona’s SALN’s in the custody of the Clerk of Court. But the Clerk, alleging that the Supreme Court as a co-equal branch of government with its own internal rules, initially refused, pleading that the Court en banc must give her authority to surrender them to the Senate. A constitutional crisis was averted when Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile rightfully ordered the Clerk of Court to surrender the SALN to the Senate. If this is a portent of things to come, we’re bound to have many more potential constitutional crises in the course of this impeachment. The lesson is clear: let us elect a President who will make responsible appointments particularly to the Judiciary. Never again should we allow a person with no mandate to govern. And by God, let’s make our elections clean and safe especially from high-tech cheats! |
SALN
Morality in the impeachment process
Am very much bothered by pronouncements made by the members and the chairman of the House Committee on Justice that they will abandon the impeachment proceeding against Justice Mariano del Castillo. The reason given was that the House could not handle the prosecution of the Corona impeachment and that of del Castillo at the same time. This is a lame excuse. To begin with, it is the constitutional duty of the committee to deal with all impeachment complaints and act as prosecutors for all impeachment proceedings. For the committee to abandon an otherwise meritorious impeachment complaint because they’re doing too much already is itself an abdication of a constitutional mandate. Worse, it may send the message that the impeachment of the Chief Justice Corona is not about justice, but as Gloria Arroyo and her cohorts have been saying, part only of a political vendetta. Why?
Del Castillo’s impeachment is all about morality. It is about what is right and what is wrong. It is good versus evil. It is wrong to steal, be it under the laws of God or the laws of men. Plagiarism, any which way you look at it, is thievery. It became robbery when Del Castillo’s ponencia even twisted the already plagiarized work of others to support the exact opposite of the thesis submitted by the plagiarized authors: that is, that victims of mass rape during World War II are entitled to the legal remedy of reparations. It may even be akin to genocide not only because the root word of “plagiarism” was derived from murder, but also because on its face value, the Del Castillo ponencia added insult to the injury of the victims when the decision declared that there was no non-derogable prohibition on rape as a war crime during World War II. Ergo, it may have been allowed. It even insinuated that rape committed against civilian populations was not even criminal during World War II.
It was precisely this kind of a ponencia that made the whole nation to think about the fitness of the justices of the High Court to sit where they do today. In the minds of many, why bother to have a Supreme Court when they are not able to give the victims of gross injustice, even the semblance of a legal remedy?
This will also explain why despite legal formalism which requires the people to accept the decisions of the high court as being final and executory, the people questioned the wisdom of the Supreme Court’s decisions on the Truth Commission and the temporary restraining order on the watch-list order against Mrs. Arroyo. These decisions, like the exoneration of Del Castillo for plagiarism and the court’s order to admonish the UP 37, were deemed to be contrary to morality and natural justice. It was the Del Castillo impeachment complaint that opened the public’s mind to the reality that while the court is referred to as “supreme”, its decisions need not be infallible. Without the Del Castillo impeachment complaint and the ensuing public debate surrounding it, it would have been impossible to rally the people around President Aquino today in damning an Arroyo court.
And lest we forget, Mrs. Arroyo and her cronies are now highlighting that Corona’s impeachment is all about political vendetta. The latest pronouncement is that the Corona impeachment was the President’s way of getting even with the court for awarding Hacienda Luisita to its farmer beneficiaries. Of course I don’t believe this. On the contrary, I have maintained that Corona should have been impeached on Day One of PNoy’s presidency. But pubic opinion is not what lawyers and professors believe. It is about what the average person in the street thinks. Abandon the Del Castillo impeachment and Juan de la Cruz will think that perhaps, Arroyo and her cohorts are correct—that the Corona impeachment is not about what is right or wrong. It is about decisions that proved to be painful to the powers that be. And yes, Rep. Arroyo still commands billions in resources sufficient to support a public relations campaign to portray the Corona impeachment as nothing but vendetta. Dismiss the Del Castillo complaint and you remove the moral dimension in the impeachment process. This is exactly what the Arroyo public relations machinery needs. Could it be that this is the real plan of those who want the earlier impeachment complaint to be dismissed?
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10-4-9 for removal of Corona
Photo from Philippine Daily Inquirer 12/15/11
So it happened. A few days after my column last week where I exhorted the impeachment of both Chief Justice Renato Corona and Associate Justice Mariano Del Castillo, the President, weary of yet another TRO from the Arroyo court -asked his allies in Congress to impeach the Chief Justice. And while I have maintained that this should have been done since day 1 of his administration, its certainly better late than never, as the saying goes.
Critics though have claimed that the impeachment will undermine the independence of our courts. Far from it. In the first place, it was Corona who did it to himself. He agreed to become an unconstitutional Chief Justice when he assumed the office knowing fully well that both the language and the spirit of the Constitution barred his appointment. You cannot undermine the judiciary when you remove an unconstitutional appointee. On the contrary, you uphold the supremacy of the Constitution by doing so.
True, the Constitution defines judicial power as including the power to declare any act of any branch or instrumentality of government as null and void where there is grave abuse of discretion resulting in lack of or excess of jurisdiction. Included in this function is the duty to declare as illegal any act that is contrary to the constitution. But this is not a monopoly of the Courts. All public officers are required to uphold the constitution and the laws of the land. Surely, when it is the Supreme Court that makes a mockery of the Constitution, as it did in the case of De Castro v. JBC where the midnight appointment of Corona was upheld, the executive is duty bound to resort to the constitutional tool of impeachment to uphold the constitution and accountability of public officers.
It must be underscored that while the Constitution refers to the Senate as an “impeachment court”, the language of the organic act should not deceive the Senate. They are a court only for the purpose of determining whether the impeached official should be removed from office. This does not make them a court of law. They are still policy makers who must formulate policy on whether one should continue in public office. They should not make the mistake, as argued by Estelito Mendoza during the Erap impeachment, of acting like a court hearing a criminal case. Public office is still a privilege and not a right. When the Constitution vested in elective representatives of the people the power to remove impeachable officers, it was their will to include the issue of fitness for a public office as a policy issue and not a criminal inquiry. The standard is hence not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, nor any of the standards recognized by our rule of evidence. The sole criterion is fitness to remain in office from a policy point of view. While the grounds for impeachment should still be proven, the Senate though is free to decide on the basis of other considerations considered relevant in formulating policy. Otherwise, the power to impeach and sit as an impeachment court should have been vested in the judiciary.
So how will the Senators possibly vote on the Corona impeachment case? Well, while it is still too early to tell, my crystal ball shows the following: all four LP Senators: Drilon, Recto, Pangilinan, and Guingona will vote for impeachment. They have to. When we say impeachment is a political process, it also means that political parties, at least in the United States from whom we copied our constitution, vote along party lines. Expect the four to be joined by Senators Trillianes, Estrada , and Lacson, all of whom have proven to be staunch political nemesis of Corona’s boss, CGMA. Add to the list Senate President Enrile who should know that voting in favor of Malacanang’s wish would be the surest way of safeguarding his post as head of the Senate. Voting with JPE would be his majority floor leader Sotto and his prodigee, Honasan. That’s a sure 10 votes for impeachment.
Those who will most likely cast negative votes would be Senators allied with or sympathetic to CGMA. This would include Senators Revilla , Lapid , Arroyo, and Marcos. That’s a sure 4 votes against impeachment.
The rest, 9 in all , I think, are undecided: Santiago , in my mind, is undecided because while she appreciates Malacanang’s support for her ICC candidacy, still, she has been very clear that she does not think Corona should be impeached. Angara, as a veteran politician, should be open to offers. The same goes for Legarda. Villar and his block, including the two Cayetanos, have been rabid anti-Malacanang Senators. Palace operators may have to strike a deal first with the Villar block, if they want to have the numbers to remove Corona. Osmena is undecided because he has been maverick lately, opposing even the nomination of P Noy’s Tito, Domingo Lee, as Ambassador to China. This means that Osmena does not believe in voting along party lines. And finally, Escudero is an undecided because he normally defers to his elders in his own fraternity. One of his esteemed senior brod, former Chief Justice Renaldo Puno, is seen as being sympathetic to Corona as in fact- he even resigned earlier than his 70th birthday to facilitate Corona;s appointment. Pimentel is an undecided because he has been quoted as saying he will decide on the basis of evidence.
We need 16 Senators to remove Corona. But anything can happen. As we have known all along: never underestimate the vast powers of the President
