ACQUITTAL COULD TURN AQUINO INTO LAME DUCK
A “not guilty” verdict of the Senate impeachment court on Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona could make President Benigno Aquino 3rd a lame duck leader because he had personally exerted efforts to remove the top magistrate from office.
But former Sen. Francisco Tatad said that he believed that it was not too late for President Aquino to prevent this from happening and he should start by distancing himself from the impeachment proceedings at the Senate impeachment court.
“Certain errors were made, certain statements were issued that are not needed . . . but there is still time for him to distance himself,” Tadtad added during an interview aired on ANC on Friday morning.
He said that there was a need for the President to improve his public posture and act more like a statesman rather than giving all his attention to the conviction of Corona.
Tatad added that there were problems that needed Mr. Aquino’s attention and that they should be his priority and that he should leave the impeachment
process to itself.
The President even before the House of Representatives impeached the Chief Justice had been attacking Corona, calling him a “disciple” of then-president Gloria Arroyo in his public speeches.
He cited Corona’s vote in declaring as unconstitutional an executive order establishing the so- called Truth Commission and in issuing a temporary restraining order against a travel ban on Mrs. Arroyo.
The President also hailed the congressmen who supported the impeachment of Corona.
Tatad said that Mr. Aquino’s confidence in Congress could be wrong based on the performance of members House prosecution panel who are having a hard time proving their supposed case against Corona.
“I do not believe that he [President] has people around him who tell him these, most of them only listen and agree and they are so afraid to disagree with him,” he explained.
Tatad noted that what Mr. Aquino needs are people who can disagree with him when needed, not those who agree with everything that he says and do.
He said that it was not the impeachment trial that had “shaken” the judiciary but the President’s open intervention in the Corona case.
Even a day after the Senate impeachment court took a break, the prosecution and the defense panels would not keep their silence.
A call was posed also on Friday by a defense lawyer-spokesman to a spokesman of the House prosecution panel whom the Corona counsel said seemed to be acting as spokesman for the Chief Justice.
Rico Quicho told Rep. Lorenzo Tañada 3rd, a spokesman for the prosecution, to zip it on Corona’ supposedly preparing an “I am sorry” speech.
Tañada was earlier quoted as saying that the Chief Justice may be readying such speech on his statements of assets, liabilities and net worth.
He further said that Corona, in the supposed speech, might explain discrepancies in the statements with “I am sorry, lapse of judgment.”
The line is similar to an “I’m sorry” speech of then- President Gloria Arroyo, who apologized in a nationwide television for talking to a poll commissioner during the 2004 polls to rig the balloting in that year.
Quicho said that Tañada’s comment was “truly unfounded and has no basis since he was neither a spokesman for the Chief Justice nor was he in any position to second-guess what the Chief Justice was thinking.”
“Introducing the ‘ I am sorry’ speech was like throwing the [Arroyo] card into the arena,” another defense lawyer- spokesman, Ramon Esguerra, said.