After Corona, who's next?

The charade that is the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona now enters the homestretch at the Senate. We go into the final phase of going through the motions of a process whose outcome no less than President Aquino would not have otherwise.

Expected today are the oral arguments of the prosecution and the defense, a summation of the greatest judicial rip-off the civilized world has ever seen. After that, the senator-judges go into deliberations, long after having already telegraphed their positions in media interviews.

If all goes according to the Senate timetable, a decision could be reached on or before the end of the month, or by May 31. Frankly, it is a decision that has long lost all reason to inspire the kind of excitement and confidence that only real due process can inspire.

What semblance of due process and liberality one saw in the weekly hearings at the Senate were more for the Senate’s own sake, a deodorizing gambit meant to swamp the stench of a blatant and relentless black ops waged by the Aquino government against Corona.

A guilty verdict would have been far more credible and easier to accept had Corona been tried the normal way, his guilt proven by evidence obtained by regular and lawful means. But that was never the case in almost every step of the way.

Instead evidences popped up in the dead of night in house gates, or in envelopes handed by unknown short ladies, that is if they were not manufactured outright in the most massive utilization of an entire government’s machinery just to convict one man.

And so, by what logical reason would anyone expect anything but a conviction? True fewer senators — eight to be exact — are needed to secure acquittal. But of what practical good and meaningful benefit will it do to a man long since considered dead meat once Aquino took power.

An acquittal will not make much difference to a man already assured of a new impeachment initiative by December, or so swore Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales, the other half of Aquino’s all-female attack team, the other half being Justice Secretary Leila de Lima.

And that brings us to the real question that should concern all Filipinos, the question that is far more important and significant to our future as a nation than what the impeachment court decision will be, or how the senator-judges would vote.

That question is this: After Corona, who? Will the parade of suspects continue to involve only those who are considered enemies of Aquino or will the Corona trial open the floodgates to a real, honest-to-goodness crackdown against all venalities in government, no matter who gets hurt?

This early, there are already indications of where this is all headed. The challenge of Corona for other officials to sign waivers that would allow transparency in their own financial dealings was met with insidious disdain instead of as an opportunity to prove honesty.

The people who pressed Corona to bare his assets if he has nothing to hide are the very same people who refuse to bare theirs for the childish reason that they are not the ones on trial. But, as they themselves used to say — if they have nothing to hide, why the heck not?

And that only proves the lack of moral certitude in the much-ballyhooed campaign of Noynoy to rid the government of the corrupt. Noynoy is nothing more than an ill-tempered and bad-mannered “promodizer” mouthing platitudes about a product he knows nothing of or believes in.

His “daang matuwid” is nothing but a sloganeer’s pipedream, engineered to facilitate the destruction of his political foes while providing cover to his friends. Who is next after Corona? I don’t know. But for sure it will never be Noynoy’s relatives and friends.