Witness

Next Friday, Sen. Antonio Trillianes is summoned to appear at the Court of Appeals (CA) to substantiate charges he made that two justices received huge bribes from Vice President Jejomar Binay. That is an event worth anticipating — not the least because the two protagonists will be at the same place at the same time.

Although Trilianes made very serious charges against two justices, he has yet to surface his “witness” to the alleged bribery. That leaves everybody else without the means to independently evaluate the accusation based on the credentials of the supposed “witness.”

Surely the CA panel would want to know who the witness is and how proximate he might be to the alleged transaction. It is not only that the reputations of two magistrates have been sullied by possibly wild charges. The people might have been taken for a ride on a contrived claim.

Failing to substantiate the very serious charges he so publicly aired, Trillianes could be held liable for contempt. We do not know what penalties that might hold.

To date, Trillianes refuses to name his witness. We are not sure he will bring that witness when he appears before the CA. He has said that the “witness” is reluctant to testify.

As a general rule, there is no case if there is no witness. That is why whistleblowers are so important that the state is mandated to give them protection.

If there is no case, then there is no basis to publicly crucify citizens by way of unfounded allegations. Justice dictates that those who indulge in the practice be appropriately penalize — not just for the direct victims of malevolent accusation but for the public subjected to the distasteful spectacle of character assassination.

Sadly Trillanes seems to operate in a different ethical universe. He feels entitled to misuse public processes to insult, smear or otherwise trample on the rights of other citizens with callous abandon.

That is not his style. That is his flaw.

After he was summoned by the CA to explain his accusations against two sitting justices, Trillianes tried to convene a Senate hearing. On his home turf, he wants the accused justices to appear and defend themselves against an unsubstantiated charge. There, as in previous such exercises, he could bludgeon and bully the justices with wild abandon.

That attempt to convene a Senate hearing strikes many as a brazen attempt to intimidate the CA ahead of its evaluation of possible contempt charges against the senator. It could, at the same time, be a forum for magnifying the accusations made against two justices — accusations aired without a witness.

Trillianes should grant the CA evaluation of the accusations some respect. We will see on Friday if he is capable of doing that.

Counter

Through the past year, in about 20 hearings, Trillianes and his two other collaborators in the Senate Blue Ribbon “subcommittee” have been indulging in a kangaroo court of sorts. The hearings swung between exercises in mockery to shameless fishing expeditions where “resource persons” are routinely bullied to say incriminating things.

For those who value due process and mindful evaluation of evidence, these sessions were a pain to observe. The subject of these hearings is now a matter for the proper authority to evaluate, having been filed with the Ombudsman. There, the accusations might be reviewed in a more dispassionate and less politicized manner.

Or so we hope, despite the many voices that claim the Ombudsman is party to this administration’s penchant for selective justice.

Specifically on the allegation anomalies accompanied the bidding for the Makati Science High School Building, lawyers for the Vice President have submitted a counter-affidavit to the Ombudsman.

The counter takes the Ombudsman to task for “manifest bias.” This is because the Ombudsman declared the evidence against Binay is “strong” even if the charges are actually baseless.

The complaint against Binay, according to his lawyers, rests entirely on hearsay. The rule on “hearsay evidence” clearly states that an accuser cannot testify on the truth of something he merely heard from another.

The entire complaint rests on the claim of Mario Hechanova that the bidding for that particular building was rigged. Hechanova makes that claim because he says he heard it from the late Makati city engineer Nelson Morales.

Since Morales passed away, there is no way to validate what Hechanova now claims he said.

Furthermore, Hechanova executed a statement on the matter seven years after it was allegedly revealed to him by Morales. This was after Hechanova quit the Makati government to join the electoral ticket of Ernesto Mercado, the former vice mayor who tried vainly to access the mayoralty.

Binay’s lawyers contend the accusation is a mere afterthought entirely motivated by political partisanship. By resorting to mere hearsay, they deprive the accused of the right to cross-examine the source of the claim, now dead.

Not only does Hechanova possess no personal knowledge of the rigging he alleges, he undermines his own case by charging “conspiracy” (in order to include the Vice President) in the case. The only way the Ombudsman can make the charge of conspiracy stick is: a) to accept the hearsay evidence that Morales was instructed by the then mayor to rig the bid; b) present the documents Binay signed as mayor declaring the outcome of the bid; and, c) show that Binay authorized payment to the contractors.

Settled jurisprudence establishes, however, that performing the regular functions of an official such as declaring bid outcomes and authorizing payments to contractors cannot, by themselves, establish a conspiracy. Therefore the case is as weak as could be.