Think about it
Why the Corona Impeachment Trial is going nowhere
By Jun Velasco
“This above all — to thine own self, be true.”– Shakespeare
IF you come right down to it, central to — or the crux of — the exasperating verbal clashes in the Impeachment Trial is the herculean effort to ferret out “the truth” that Chief Justice Renato Corona seems mightily hiding from the public to escape conviction from so-called impeachable offenses.
We don’t need to enumerate the charges, do we? Even small school kids and the unlettered are familiar with the legal gobbledygook mouthed in the televised trial.
It’s obvious that Corona’s great luck — although many believe he’s guilty — is the stark unpreparedness of the prosecutors. People watching want to blow off some prosecutors’ heads for their idiotic arguments.
But we admire the wit, hubris, and bravado of lead prosecutor-boy, Iloilo Congressman Neil Tupaz, yes, in spite of his fumbles. We admire his spirit, his grit. Someday, we muse, he would run for president of this country. If Erap can, why can’t he?
Back to the central issue. “Truth,” by the way, has many faces. In the realm of law, the only way to uncover it (the truth) is by means of proof and evidence.
But in a broader sense, we dismiss the legal angle as too narrow a method to bring about the truth, the unvarnished truth of an issue at hand.
Under our much-celebrated rule of law, it’s only the Court, which is authorized to hand down the “truth.”
Not in the Corona case though because he is the one on trial, no less than the Chief Justice of the land.
We wish to digress a bit in light of our known individual preoccupation with this struggle to confront or cover or sideline “the truth.”
How many of our impeachment-watching friends say that those well-dressed prosecutors and defense lawyers are themselves guilty as Corona, if only their inner selves were uncovered!
One’s untruthfulness could only be held on a question of degree. But if we apply strictly the culpability of an individual not in the court of law, but in the ethical norm which, to us, is tougher because it has to do with one’s conscience, better known among Christians as the “inner voice,” then we humbly submit, most everyone is guilty.
We factor here the matter-of-factly accepted fact that ours is the most or the 2nd most corrupt nation on Planet Earth. Most corrupt or second most corrupt is horrific, isn’t it? Why are we not denouncing the evil tag?
It is as if, by our self-imposed silence, we have acquiesced to the accusation, nay, to our conviction as most corrupt. That is to say, we Filipinos are a bunch of dishonest, lying, untruthful individuals. Is that not the implication?
Why are we not filing a formal suit against that poll that gave us that evil tag, that ranked us most corrupt?
Because we are taking the label lightly, we surrender our guilt, aren’t we?
Ow, com’on, you say, why are you raising a howl, have you paid your taxes with complete honesty? O, that’s beside the point. Better to remember the late Ager Rosario, as quoted by Gonz Duque, who had a favorite quip, “agti pala mantitilaan.” Ay, there’s the rub! If we confront each and every one about how we deal with the BIR, our business associates, our dealings that involve money and our sense of farness or unfairness, then you know what we are driving at.
This, we submit, is probably why the Impeachment trial seems to be going nowhere, because there’s no strict and hard standard we should apply in dealing with what is true. We may be mentally articulate, but we have no moorings on what should really guide our behavior in ferreting the truth.
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