Last week I wrote about my friend lawyer Larry Gadon’s perhaps-quixotic campaign to impeach the current Chief Justice on exactly the same charge that her immediate predecessor was impeached and dismissed for, i.e. the filing of an erroneous statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) as required of public officials.
It seems like simple justice, doesn’t it? “Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander,” as the trite saying goes. Which is why I was amazed at the strident reactions to Atty. Larry’s filing by two law school deans no less, both writing last Saturday.
One of them, from a prestigious Jesuit university, is a fellow columnist in the mainstream press; let’s call him Dean Divine. The other is from a crowded downtown university; let’s call him Dean Holy Mary (as you can see, I’m sacrally inclined).
First let’s understand where Dean Divine is coming from, in a piece he wrote for online Rappler right after the Corona impeachment in June 2012:
“The conviction of Renato Corona under Article II of the impeachment complaint against him should count as a victory in Philippine governance—first, by the successful completion of the impeachment process, and second, by setting the standard of accountability that should be met by our public officials.”
Okay, brave words indeed. But what does Divine have to say about Sereno’s impeachment on exactly the same grounds as Article II: the filing of an erroneous SALN?
“There is absolutely no truth to [the SALN charge]…Chief Justice Sereno, at that time a private practitioner…was compensated professionally by the PH government and all the payments to her have been duly reported to the authorities.”
Does this sound like a resounding denial that she filed an erroneous SALN, never mind what other reports she may or may not have separately prepared? Not to me.
Divine goes on to object to every other allegation lodged against Sereno, both by Atty. Larry and separately by VACC’s Dante Jimenez. Yet he had no such qualms about the fishing expedition launched against Corona, when the opening salvo of something like two dozen different allegations ended up with just that single solitary charge: an erroneous SALN filing that can be remedied simply by filing an amended SALN.
For his part, Dean Holy Mary, writing for online Interaksyon, rhetorically asks, “CJ Sereno poses no grave danger to the nation: Impeachment is a waste of time.” Again this distressingly forgiving attitude, shared with Dean Divine, when it comes to Sereno but not Corona, although both were charged with the exact same offense.
I could go on and on, but let me close on Divine with his pontification: “A fool’s errand is defined as attempt to do something that has no chance of success…Impeaching CJ Sereno is a fool’s errand…Our representatives are duly warned: fools attract fools, and only fools will endorse these complaints.”
Holy Mary says pretty much the same thing: “How can such impeachment cases prosper? Only when their champions in Congress are totally warped in their advocacies.”
Well. One thing you can’t accuse Divine of is foolishness. That’s because, in 2012, PNoy took care to line the pockets of Congress with hundreds of millions in bribe money misappropriated from DAP in order to convict Corona. No longer was his impeachment just a “fool’s errand.”
Only three senators turned out to be “fools” and “warped.” Two of them, the redoubtable Joker Arroyo and Miriam Santiago, have gone on to the great debating chamber in the sky. The third, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., showed the steel in his spine, on this and other votes, that puts his ideological nemeses to shame.
The rest of the obliging congressmen and senators were not “fools” at all, not with all that cash for the taking. Neither did they allow their priorities to be “warped” by something as old-fashioned as conscience. You know who they were; their names are still on record.
Which of course begs the question of who were/are being played for fools in the Corona impeachment (when it succeeded) and now in the Sereno impeachment (if it fails). Dare we say, the Filipino people?
Readers can write me at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com.