Cebuanos meet CJ Corona's defense team

If we followed the political slogan of President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III, “Kung Walang Corrupt, Walang Mahirap” and use it as a gauge for his almost two-year Presidency… then he must be failing terribly. Just look at the news of the national dailies…“Poor families rise to 11.1%... Self-rated poverty surges by 2 million families. More than half of households claim to be poor, up from 45 percent in December.” All this means, there is something wrong with the President’s so-called poverty alleviation programs.

I have always said that his Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), the backbone of Daang Matuwid, could never work because when you give money to the poor… they will still end up hungry when the money runs out… that’s if the money wasn’t spent on jueteng and the like. If you use the P-Noy logic, then if the Filipino people are still “Mahirap” it could only mean that the people in the government are still “Corrupt.” This is simple logic!

Now this is something that P-Noy could no longer pin the blame on the previous administration. He must be humble enough to accept that he has failed the Filipino people. This is what I’ve been harping as a serious mistake of the 1987 Constitution… that six years is too long for a lousy President, while it is just too short for a good one. We need to change now and by this I mean… not change the President but the system of governance!

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Cebu finally got to meet the Defense Team of Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Renato Corona, notably, Atty. Tranquil Salvador III, Atty. Jose Roy III, Atty. Rico Paulo Quicho and yes, the most popular amongst them for she is beauty and brains personified… Atty. Karen Jimeno. They held a presscon at the Cebu Country Club last Wednesday afternoon and were the guest speakers for the Rotary Club of Cebu (Mother) and I had a full hour with them on my TV talkshow, which will air on May 7.

They were very surprised that the questions thrown by the Cebu media were brutally frank… and the next day… it was all out in the local newspapers. Perhaps the reason is the media in Cebu traditionally had more editorial independence than most of our counterparts in Manila. The Rotary Club members too had their fill… usually, they would engage even in a debate if they are not convinced with the answers. But somehow, the four legal eagles answered the most brutally frank questions and the Rotarians who are not easy to appease were glad that they heard it directly from the Defense team.

One of the major issues raised was whether the defense would allow CJ Corona to be presented as a witness. They told me in no uncertain terms that if this were an ordinary trial… they would do so. But in the light of the rules of the Senate Impeachment rules where thy are not allowed to obey to leading or worse, questions that should never be asked… then there is no point because the truth of the matter is… as I long suspected, there are people who are not interested in the presentation of evidence… rather their main objective is to destroy the reputation of the Chief Justice.

I’m only a law student (my father died while I was 3rd year in USC and I had to run the business so I had to quit law school), so I fully agree with the defense team for doing the right thing for their client. Perhaps the toughest question they answered was about the US$10 million that the Office of the Ombudsman raised against CJ Corona.

But Atty. Judd Roy answered it correctly that we have Bank secrecy laws that throws the question right back at the Office of the Ombudsman… where she got that information, because even the Senator/Judges could not violate these bank secrecy laws? In my book, the Office of the Ombudsman which is saddled with so many unsolved and unfiled cases ought to do their job and leave this matter for the Senate Impeachment court… otherwise we can plainly see that the Office of the Ombudsman has become part and parcel of the black propaganda that the Palace Rasputin’s have concocted to besmirch the reputation of the Chief Justice. This is no longer Justice; it is in fact a gross injustice done by the Executive Branch to the Judiciary!

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As we promised, we shall be writing on that manifesto now being circulated around if and when I get a copy of this. Well, I just got my copy but unfortunately, it is too long to fit in one column as it is five-pages long and in double space. Hence I will just write about this in the next succeeding columns. It is entitled, “Unite to Defend Democracy and Build the Nation!”

What is unusual in this manifesto is that… first it is too long to publish in a newspaper and second it is not signed by anyone. But clearly, it was cleverly crafted as it details the nation’s ills today and seeks to overhaul (not overthrow) the current system of governance… something right down my alley. Indeed, we need to fix our nations problems for the sake of our people.

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