Their fault

Your honors, if you please, I would want to file this supplemental memorandum for the sake of saving my face as well as the honor of the agency I head.

The good senator-judges might have concluded we do sloppy work at the Land Registration Authority (LRA), especially since I was a classmate of President Aquino at the Ateneo. It was Senator Jinggoy Estrada who brought up the fact that Noy and I were classmates.

I submit, your honors, that mention of this incidental fact was a low blow. That is sad because the good senator also comes from the same school. It is a low blow because it seems to suggest we were just “Noynoying” at the agency I now head.

I take exception to any suggestion that I was appointed to head the LRA simply because I was a classmate of the President. I have excellent credentials for the post I now occupy, your honors. What those credentials are, I do not now recall. I will submit them to the impeachment court as soon as the computer search is done.

Proof of how hard we work at the LRA, your honors, is that we were able to compile the list of 45 properties attributed to the Chief Justice even before Chief Prosecutor Niel Tupas could formally write us a request for the same. It was such hard work doing that compilation, as you can imagine. We had to type out such long names as Coronado and Cristina to cue the computer search.

The search will have been easier if all we had to type out was a short, unique name like “Niel.” But there were so many people named Renato and Cristina, your honors. Also, our computers were unable to distinguish between “Castillo” and “del Castillo.” We have brought up the matter with our technology providers.

The defense counsel identified 17 land titles in our compilation that were stamped “cancelled.” At the time we made our compilation, your honors, I thought that was a trivial matter. That is why I kept them on the list.

It seems, your honors, there is a software glitch in the computers supplied us. This has to be due to corruption committed during the previous administration. It is their fault.

The software glitch caused properties in the name of Ysmael Mathay and the National Housing Authority to turn up in the compilation of properties attributed to the Chief Justice. I did not take them off the compilation because, well, we never really know. Maybe Mathay and the NHA were fronting for Corona. The computer knows best.

Also, if the list we submitted to the prosecution was too short, I might be accused of laziness (again as an implication of having been a presidential classmate). The prosecution seems to want a long list and that is exactly what I gave them. Notice they filed the articles of impeachment alleging the Chief Justice owned numerous properties a full month before they asked me to do a computer search. They must be prescient.

If there is any sloppiness, it is entirely on the part of the congressmen, not on mine.

At any rate, your honors, I have shut down all computer searches at the LRA as I mentioned in my testimony. I did that immediately after I ran a search using my own unlikely name. The computer turned up a list of 107 properties attributable to me. That shocked my wife, and for days I went to work without being fed breakfast.

As I mentioned in court, your honors, it is not my job to verify the compilation produced by a computer search. That is the prosecution’s job. I have more important things to do, things like finding out why our office computers are not supplied with Angry Birds programs.

It was the prosecution, your honors, that failed to exercise due diligence. They did not look with care at the compilation I supplied them. They failed to notice early enough 17 land titles were stamped “cancelled.” They did not notice that properties of a certain “del Castillo” were mixed up with those of “Castillo” — and that some of the Castillo titles belonged to namesakes.

The prosecution, your honors, were simply too anxious to go to town and advertise that the Chief Justice had 45 real properties. It was too late before they realized they could not prove Mathay and the NHA were actually dummies for the Chief Justice. They could not prove that all the Castillos and del Castillos were in fact relatives.

If this whole affair produced a disaster for the prosecution, that is their fault and not mine. Please do not take it out on me.

All I did, your honors, was to print out what the computer turned up. GIGO is a term in computer parlance for “garbage in, garbage out.” That is different from the word Sen. Miriam used on the floor.

Let me reiterate, your honors, that I was not the one responsible for releasing to the media the misleading information about the Chief Justice owning 45 real properties. I realize now that such a large number had great propaganda value. It could be used to skew public opinion — and by so doing produce political pressure on the impeachment court.

The compilation I submitted to the prosecution panel was raw and largely garbage. I wrongly assumed they would have the discernment and the sense of responsibility to verify the information and use it with prudence. I was wrong.

I now realize, your honors, GIGO does not apply only to computers. It also applies to the prosecution panel.