'Corona impeachment not a priority of Aquino administration'

TARLAC CITY, Philippines  – Impeaching Chief Justice Renato Corona is not a priority of the administration even after the Supreme Court declared Executive Order No. 1 creating the Truth Commission as unconstitutional, President Aquino declared here yesterday.

Aquino also dared critics to face him over accusations of being inaccurate after revealing that some members of the House of Representatives wanted to impeach an SC justice.

“I will tell you who between us is lying,” Aquino dared critics.

Asked whether he was seriously considering impeaching Corona, Aquino pointed out that “impeachment is an act by Congress.”

“There is a complainant, there is an endorser who is a member of the House of Representatives. We might have our own opinions. I ask you to go around and look at various civic groups...one of the judges complained of the decision, that came out in one of the major dailies.

“I’m just quoting from what was told me. He said, ‘I might be disciplined by (my) superiors in the Supreme Court but I think this was a wrong decision brought about by a political court, by a political Supreme Court’,” Aquino said.

But Aquino said that despite this perception, he would rather focus on what should be done in his six years in office.

“Prosecution, according to the Supreme Court, lasts six years. If we will put intramurals like impeachment as our priority, our attention might be diverted…there might be a lot of lost opportunities,” Aquino said.

The President though warned the SC that if it would continue to show to the people that they have no more avenue to get the right decisions, there might be consequences.

“I’m not the only one concerned about what is happening,” Aquino said.

He noted that the SC, as the final arbiter of the laws of the land, should have solid decisions.

“We are studying all of the options on how best to achieve the aim in the fastest time possible,” Aquino said.

Aquino clarified that he talked about the possibility of impeachment during his live news conference Wednesday but was not referring to the Chief Justice but to another magistrate.

“I was asked: Are we considering impeachment? And my answer was, there are members of Congress who have been espousing the same for another justice.

“Instead of focusing on impeachment, maybe we can have more dialogues within the bounds of law so that what we presume to be the right thing – to find out what happened in the past nine and a half years – (can be realized),” Aquino told reporters after leading the first Barangay Assembly Day in Barangay Central here following the Proclamation No. 74 that he issued.

“Now with the decision that seemed to have blocked (the effort to ferret out the truth) some of our allies who were recommending (the impeachment) became more enraged because they were already losing confidence that this would be corrected,” Aquino said.

The President said a “very expanded” legal panel is now studying the options they could take as regards EO 1.

“I’m awaiting their recommendations,” he said. “They are threshing out various scenarios and various means of achieving the same aim, perhaps in a more defined form, but the recommendations are not yet with me.”

 Aquino stressed that the proposal to impeach Corona was not his idea.

“But again, there are checks and balances accorded by the Constitution. In our view, just like the concept of class legislation, while the Constitution envisioned only six years, the past administration reached nine and a half years, that’s almost two terms, which was not envisioned by the Constitution,” Aquino said.

“So maybe that was the only time there would be an administration with such a long period (in office). Different views would say couldn’t they be treated as class of its own because of the long time they (were in power)? That can be looked at as a basis,” he said.

The SC declared Tuesday that EO 1 violated the equal protection clause since it singled out the Arroyo administration in the investigations to be conducted by the Truth Commission.