Misplaced sympathy

NO MATTER if brought upon oneself, misery is bound to attract sympathy. It all seems a natural arrangement, one that tends even to affirm such innate goodness of man as man likes to believe. But carried to such lengths as giving misery the company it precisely courts, and proverbially loves, sympathy becomes misplaced.

Indeed, no more misplaced than in the case of the impeached chief justice, Renato Corona, a man desperate that company in misery come in the form of a verdict of acquittal or at least an open-ended reprieve owing to his sudden slide into a perilous state of health, an instance of force majeure.

Again, Corona’s condition is the precise type that tugs at one’s heartstrings so compellingly one’s sense of perspective could become impaired. Lest that be the case, let’s remind ourselves of the precedent developments.

Just as they had waned to a flicker, expectations of a court appearance by Corona reignited when his counsels gave their word with a date fixed to it. And sure enough, he came on the promised day, and seized it.

No, he hijacked it.

He took the stand and lost no time extolling himself and his family, appropriating virtues such as hard work, frugality, and uprightness, virtues they had managed to keep, he proclaimed on the verge of tears, in the face of injustice—first at the hands of his wife’s relations, now at the hands of his impeachers, their witnesses, some members of the court, the media, the pollsters, and just about everyone else he perceived antagonistic toward him. If patience were another of his virtues, it obviously had run out for these people by now: they were all liars, and he was the only truth-teller.

Reading his testimony, he was indulged for three hours, interrupted only a few times and gently, almost apologetically even, by the president of the court, Juan Ponce Enrile, asking him to, please, get to the point.

He had come with only his word to give. But when he brought out a piece of paper, signed it, and announced that it was the document long asked of him, permitting the disclosure of what secret bank accounts he had kept, if he had kept any at all, he looked at the moment as if he might have got something or even taken the upper hand, however incredibly.

It turned out, however, to be a document of mere intent, a waiver that would become good only after all his impeachers—188 congressmen—and the one senator-judge his chief counsel, Serafin Cuevas, had been picking on, in fact asking to recuse himself—Franklin Drilon—had themselves each signed a similar waiver.

He was done testifying, but not tricking: “The chief justice…wishes to be excused,” he announced and, without waiting fora reply from the court, stepped off the stand and walked away, precluding cross-examination. But he was caught in the garage, his escape frustrated by a lockdown ordered by Enrile.

He returned to court in a wheelchair,with a ready excuse: a diabetic—a piece of foreshadowing information he had in fact given in his testimony—he had taken his insulin before lunchtime but skipped lunch, breaking a prescribed regimen of treatment, thereby inducing a sharp drop in his blood-sugar count. He was taken to hospital, but ordered to return to court today.

This is the man playing for your sympathy, for your company in misery. There’s no doubt he feels miserable, but it’s a condition irrelevant and immaterial, as he of all people ought to know, to the dispensation of justice.