Senior Deputy Speaker and former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo called President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. “a man who will be supportive of the work that trial judges do to provide justice to Filipinos.”
Speaking before the 29th conference of the Philippine Trial Judges League held last October 12 in Subic Bay Freeport, the former President adverted to the Senate impeachment trial of Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona when President Marcos, Jr. was still a senator.
“In the end, only three senators voted to acquit the then-Chief Justice….The third was Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. This, despite Justice Corona voting against the Marcos family in the cases before him,” Arroyo said.
Thus, our President is a man who believes in justice and principle, a man who will be supportive of the work that you do to provide justice to our citizens.”
Arroyo likewise qualified that the late Chief Justice received his judicial vindication after the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to grant his retirement benefits to Corona’s widow, ruling that while the Senate impeachment as a political process removed him from office, he was not judicially convicted of any crime.
Furthermore, the former President recalled the politically-motivated cases filed against her by supporters of her immediate successor to emphasize the vital role of trial judges as frontliners in the delivery of justice. She stated: “I mentioned these big cases involving personalities at the highest levels. If injustices can be done at such high levels, what more at the lower levels, involving ordinary citizens. Who will protect them? As trial judges, your decisions are what will inspire our citizens to believe that the Philippine justice system works.”
Underscoring her continuing faith in the country’s justice system, she said that all the cases filed against her eventually failed “because so many in our judicial system are decent, fair-minded people who acted on the basis of actual evidence and their conscience, rather than giving way to blind, partisan zealousness.”
Another speaker at the event was Supreme Court Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo.
