Ethics and search for truth

The televised impeachment trial of Chief Justice Corona is a novelty in TV amusement series. This human drama drowns all telenovelas because it is telecast live. It is educational in many ways: portraying the many aspects of bank accounts, security of deposits and bank investments, statement of assets and liabilities and networth (SALN) and impeachment proceedings.

How lawyers perform professionally seems that they may not work together in harmony because to a non-lawyer, it appears that for every case discussed by 100 lawyers there are 101 opinions. In the search for truth and justice, a lawyer may not confine his arguments to protecting the rights of his client but may even attempt to hide the guilt through a mantle of technicalities. Isn’t there a code of ethics for lawyers where in the art of litigation all arguments should be directed to the search for truth and justice?

At the onset of the Senate hearings Senate president Ponce Enrile, the presiding officer, emphasized in his preamble that the Constitution specifically relegated the function to impeach a high government official to the Senate, and that the trial will not be conducted in a manner similar to court hearings where contending parties will use legal technicalities in the process but instead will employ only means to arrive at a political conclusion. Yet in the Senate hearings, the defense counsel had all the latitudes to block the presentation of evidence by the prosecution using technicalities. Black and white evidence allegedly extracted illegally was disqualified. Isn’t evidence per se evidence? Even if there is irregularity in the procurement isn’t the credibility of cold evidence valued as truth nevertheless, then the guilt of the presentor should be penalized for the misdemeanor?

Isn’t the prosecution panel (congressmen) at a big disadvantage when matched in the process, with ex-Associate Justice Cuevas and a host of “campanilla lawyers,” it was like puny David in a battle with giant Goliath?

In the presentation of manifestations can speech and body language be tempered to low volume? Although aggressive terminology and behavior may be excusable for the sake of emphasis and natural disposition, can’t protagonists emulate the late Sir Winston Churchill in his pronouncement that “Even if you have to kill a man, it costs no more to be polite.” — Dr. SANTIAGO A. DEL ROSARIO, Commissioner, PMA legislation, former PMA president