So here comes the lawyers of Chief Justice Renato Corona, trying to defend him. They say, it was but natural for the Chief Justice to withdraw his many millions from his PSBank accounts on the very same day that he was impeached.After all, they argue, what would a husband do if those funds were his wife’s, and they were in danger of being scrutinized?
Well, if you ask me, if there was nothing wrong with those funds being in his name, then I would expect him to do absolutely nothing.I would expect him to let those funds stay there and await discovery.After all, he did say he had nothing to hide, right?So, why this hurried flight of cash?
Two points stick out and lead our noses to the conclusion that actually, there are a few things wrong with these funds being in his name. (Hence, the need to hide the funds from the prosecution).
The first is why were they not disclosed in his statement of assets?Public officials are required to include the assets of their spouses and immediate kin.This cash was his nominally, and if were to believe his lawyers, then his wife’s in reality.But either way, that cash had to show up in his SALN.But it didn’t.On that count alone, our supreme interpreter of the law broke the law.Or maybe we could prevaricate and say, he failed to interpret the law correctly.
The second is, even if we believe the spin doctors who are now trying to say the money did not belong to his wife, but to a family corporation of the wife’s, what’s the supreme interpreter of the law doing helping his wife hide money? (Let me hark back to the statement that he had nothing to hide).
Even supposing that his wife was embroiled in a bitter family dispute, does that mean that a Chief Justice should actually help his wife hide those funds from her relatives by pretending to be the owner of those funds and letting those funds be stashed in his name? Doesn’t that sort of smack of deceit?A hint of pretense, when the records are falsified to show his name as owner?And aren’t all these words that I just used like deceit, pretense and falsification, all words we do not expect and we do not want to see sticking right beside the name of our Supreme Court Chief Justice?
At least, that’s the logical conclusion to be reached when corporate funds aren’t placed in the bank account of the corporation.Why else would they be placed in the name of a private person, who just happens to be the highest court officer of the land?Would it be because once those funds are in his name, they would then be (theoretically) beyond the scrutiny of mere mortals?
These are the reasons why I do not feel it is natural for a husband to withdraw those funds.And why I do not feel he remains fit to be a Supreme Court justice.He has lost those attributes of integrity, honesty, and trustworthiness, which we demand from our public servants.(Fine, these attributes might be hard to come by, even rare to find, but it doesn’t mean we have to stop expecting them.)
And by the way, there’s also one other trait I do not expect to see from a Chief Justice: prone to retaliation.Corona has just dared the President to show his psychological records.But what is he doing, slugging it out in the arena of public opinion?
You can take off the gloves, Mr. Chief Justice, but first you have to take off the robes.