A moral crucible
CHIEF JUSTICE Renato Corona has announced, although not without his usual hemming and hawing, that he will testify at his own impeachment trial. Anyway, if and when he does testify, that will be the day.
On the stand, Corona cannot expect to be taken at his word, as has been the case in his much too gentle handling by the media and other out-of-court questioners; he has to take hard questions and show hard evidence.
That is, if the impeachment court proves true to its mandate.
The mortifying reality is that, after six weeks of trial, the impeachment court seems still unsure of itself. How does it deal with Corona once he appears and starts acting as if he were its superior, instead of its subject, and telling it what it can and cannot do? Surely that will take some doing, and undoing, given the concessions it has already made to Corona’s court; two make for enough self-debasement: an order preventing peeking in to his dollar accounts, and another thwarting summonses for anyone in the Supreme Court, no matter if he or she only works there.
Indeed, the impeachment court will have to decide what animal it is, instead of taking its time to grow into its proper species, whatever that may be; “a work in progress” is its standard excuse for itself, which is completely out of keeping with its task, a national emergency no less in which at issue is the very trustworthiness of the man at the helm of the highest court.
So where does the impeachment court begin working on itself? Perspective: it has to crawl out of the squeeze it has put itself in by its own indecision –a squeeze applied by pairs of forces potentially complementary but ending up deployed against each other.
The trial itself has served as a battleground between strengths, between powers, between skills, not as, only aptly, a moral crucible, a character test. On those terms, legalities predictably have gained in applicability, and twistability, thus able to hold the immutable and self-attesting truth down, entombed, struggling against its very nature to reveal itself.
Exploiting the impeachment court’s defaults meanwhile, Corona’s own Supreme Court has pre-empted ascendancy over it, treating it like any other lower court.
In fact, the impeachment court is a surrogate court of the sovereign power itself, the people, and anyone sensible enough knows that, sufficiently provoked, the people themselves assert their sovereign power and exercise direct judgment in its own way – on the street, at the polls, in the media, even in cyberspace, where actually it has begun serving grave and overwhelming notice.
To prove itself worthy of the power the people have lent to it, the impeachment court will have to seize that power for itself and wield it determinedly in the people’s interest. And that would mean allowing the extraction and exposure of such amount of truth as will decisively answer the questions raised about Corona’s character, questions like: Did he really acquire and spend beyond his means? Did he really make dishonest declarations in his Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth? Did he really exert influence on his court, or manipulate its processes, to do anyone a favor?
Only until the impeachment court has thus sorted its perspective will it become ready for Corona, if and when he appears.
The consequent question is, Will Corona be ready for that court?
[…] wonder is what sort of act Miriam has reserved for Corona himself when – if – he comes to testify. To be sure, she has proved herself also capable of saccharine […]
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