Corona voted in favor of GMA in all 19 cases brought before SC

[Monseratto]

I wonder why no one is demanding COMELEC Chair Sixto Brillantes from inhibiting from cases involving pandak too. He was the election lawyer of Kiko Pimentel and FPJ, and was a known "fixer" at the COMELEC before...

[shadow]

I wonder why no one is demanding COMELEC Chair Sixto Brillantes from inhibiting from cases involving pandak too. He was the election lawyer of Kiko Pimentel and FPJ, and was a known "fixer" at the COMELEC before...

We should ask Allan Peter cayetano...

[niwde11]

We should ask Allan Peter cayetano...

hehehhe its shows the "system".:D

[creepy]

Teddy Locsin is a good writer and speaker but his logic (and judgement) is usually flawed and very poor. He is just full of venom, which is why people are wary of crossing him. I hope people stop listening to the cr*p he spits out.

Propriety (not legality or constitutionality) demands that Corona inhibit himself.

[Altis6453]

^ yup. The guy is a recycled politician. Thing is, when you have 5 min. on TV, a former presidential speechwriter can write and deliver a piece as if he knows what ails this country and how to solve it. Locsin, in his all expertise, will only tell other people who to blame for it.

[Altis6453]

Looks like the President is taking the fight to Corona:

Only a few meters separated them but the gap seemed so wide as President Benigno Aquino III yet again attacked the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Renato Corona in a nationally televised public forum.

“Just let it be. It’s almost Christmas. Let’s think of peace,” Corona told reporters after listening to the President’s speech at the First National Criminal Justice Summit hosted by the Department of Justice at the Manila Hotel.

But later, the Supreme Court issued a statement saying that “while it is the prerogative of the President to speak his mind, we find it quite disturbing” especially done at an event that was supposed to foster “cooperation and coordination.”

“It is not at all unusual for the executive branch to disagree with the judicial branch. But what is considerably unusual is for the Chief Executive to look down on members of the judiciary in public … and to their faces denounce the court’s independent actions,” Supreme Court spokesperson Midas Marquez read from a statement.

Mr. Aquino lectured Corona in his speech, telling him that the Supreme Court is accountable to the people and saying its power emanated from them.

“We have no plan to step on its rights or humiliate the credibility of anyone. But we have to go back to the main principle of our democracy. Those of us who took an oath to serve only owe it to one: you who are our boss, the Filipino people,” the President said.

“Now there is one public servant who owes a debt of gratitude not to the people who should be the source of our power, but to a patron who squeezed him into the position, will we rely on him to look at the interest of the people?” he added.

Mr. Aquino said the court had seen nothing wrong with the so-called “midnight appointment” by outgoing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of Corona as Chief Justice when the Constitution stated that a President could not appoint anyone within two months before the next presidential election. He pointed out that Corona was appointed a week after the May 2010 balloting.

No retreat

“The question now is did the Supreme Court violate the Constitution?” the President said.

“To all of those who are our partners in the road to the right path, have faith: As long as we are in the right, we will not retreat in any fight. As long as the people are behind us, we will succeed. Let us not fail the people,” the President said.

On Thursday, the President gave Corona a dressing down at the 30th anniversary celebration of the Makati Business Club.

As Corona sat in stony silence in Monday’s summit, Mr. Aquino did not mince words when he spoke about several instances when the court stopped him from going after Arroyo. He has vowed to put her in jail before Christmas for alleged corruption and electoral sabotage.

Arroyo, now a Pampanga representative, is under hospital arrest after a joint Commission on Elections-Department of Justice (Comelec-DOJ) panel criminally charged her with ordering a 12-0 victory for administration senatorial candidates in 2007 in Maguindanao province on the basis of a testimony by the provincial administrator who is accused of covering up the 2009 massacre of 57 people.

The 64-year-old former President, who is suffering from a rare bone ailment, has denied any wrongdoing.

Mr. Aquino said that the Constitution provided that “power emanates from the people and that all power in government come from them.”

He said he made this reminder because this provision was forgotten during the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship when his father—the assassinated Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino—was jailed and denied justice.

The President said he had taken an oath to “take care and protect” the Constitution and this included a mandate to ensure that there would be “no repeat of the darkness in the time of martial law and to go after those who had done this.”

Litany of transgressions

Mr. Aquino said he had formed the Philippine Truth Commission to investigate the allegations of corruption in the Arroyo administration but the court junked the body as unconstitutional. The court then said that the commission was zeroing in on the former President and that this violated the equal protection clause.

“This is just the first step but already a barricade had been put up,” the President said.

He said the Comelec-DOJ move against Arroyo had also been questioned in the high court. Similarly, the Arroyo camp questioned the legality of the arrest warrant issued by the Pasay City Regional Trial Court against Arroyo for election sabotage.

Mr. Aquino said that when the high court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the DOJ ban on Arroyo’s travelling abroad for medical treatment, it had several conditions.

“But eventually, the high court itself admitted that there was no need to fulfill the conditions. You put out conditions that you don’t intend to follow,” he said.

He said the Palace had followed the process and despite this he pointed out that it was the Palace that was said “to be the one looking for a fight.”

“Who will not doubt then their real intention?” the President added, noting that this was not the first time the court came out with decisions that were “hard to understand.”

“I will stand firm that justice is not a steering wheel that can just be turned where the justices want to go. This is not a toy of lawyers and justices that can be reversed and played to what they want,” he said.

Mr. Aquino said he had vowed to protect and fight for the interest of the people. “I have no intention of violating my sworn oath; I have no intention of failing the people.”

Walkout nixed

After his speech, the President shook hands with officials sitting with him in the presidential table, including Corona. He shook hands with the Chief Justice when he arrived at the event and when he departed.

Mr. Aquino’s speech was interrupted only once with applause when he reiterated that the power of the Supreme Court, the President and Congress “come from their sole boss: the people.”

Throughout the program, the President sat a seat away from Corona with Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile between them.

Marquez told reporters Corona chose to remain “speechless, motionless and expressionless because of the requirements of protocol.”

While the Aquino administration remained “popular,” he said “no one (branch of the government) has an overruling influence over the other.”

“The accumulation of all the powers in the same hands, whether one, a few or many, and whether appointed or elected, may justly be the very definition of tyranny,” Marquez said.

He disclosed that some “members of the judiciary” wanted Corona and the entire delegates from the judiciary to stage a walkout in protest of the President’s stinging speech.

“Of course that can be done. It’s not very difficult to do that, but then we don’t want the people to suffer,” he said. “This is a summit for all of us, for the Filipino people. We will continue to work with different stakeholders in the justice sector so we can have a more efficient justice system in the country.”

[explorer]

from: www.bworldonline.com

[SIZE=4]Corona Court damaged badly[/SIZE]

To Take A Stand
By Oscar P. Lagman, Jr.
Posted on November 28, 2011 10:50:26 PM

Sen. Joker Arroyo assailed Justice Secretary Leila de Lima for openly defying the Supreme Court’s temporary restraining order (TRO). He said that GMA’s right to travel was merely incidental when compared to the executive branch’s move to emasculate and damage the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court under the leadership of Renato Corona has long been emasculated and damaged before Secretary De Lima ignored the court’s order. It is so by its own doing.

In the eyes of legal eagles and political pundits, Secretary de Lima’s defiance of the court’s order was wrong. But civil society groups, party lists, and even employee associations like the Philippine Airlines flight attendants, ever the first to denounce transgressions of the law, not only hailed De Lima’s defiance of the court, they mobilized themselves to prevent the Arroyos from departing. To these politicized citizens, the Corona Court has lost its moral authority to enforce the provisions of the Constitution for it has itself violated the Constitution, not once but several times.

Renato Corona’s midnight appointment as chief justice was itself in violation of the provisions of the Constitution. His associates in the court, all appointees of GMA, affirming the legality of his appointment as chief justice was in defiance of the Constitution.

The Corona Court set aside the Constitution so that Dato Arroyo, son of GMA, can have a district to represent. The representative of the old 2nd District of Camarines Sur previous to Dato wanted to be back in Congress as the district’s representative. The GMA subservient Congress broke up the district into two, one for Dato and the other for the former representative, a true son of the district.

That act of Congress was questioned before the Supreme Court as there would be disproportionate representation of Camarines Sur in Congress in contravention of the provision of the Constitution on equal representation. However, the Supreme Court upheld Congress. So, now the district formerly represented in Congress by one congressman is now represented by two whereas the two larger districts are represented by only one each.

The older son of GMA, Mikey, has to have a seat in Congress too. The sycophants of Gloria Arroyo in the COMELEC allowed him Mikey to represent “Ang Galing Pinoy,” the party list of tricycle drivers and security guards in Congress. The Supreme Court quickly dismissed the disqualification complaint against Mikey citing that the case was outside its jurisdiction.

But the Supreme Court moved swiftly to stop impeachment proceedings against Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez following her petition for certiorari and prohibition, when impeachment is well within the province of the House of Representatives. Gutierrez also claimed that the two impeachment complaints against her violated the constitutional provision that allowed only one case a year. But instead of stopping the proceedings on the second impeachment complaint and allowing the first one filed to be heard, the Corona Court issued an indefinite order for a serious status quo ante on both complaints. The order shielded Gutierrez from any adverse move against her for five months, which in turn prevented any graft charges against Arroyo from prospering until last week.

The Corona Court has flip-flopped five times on the constitutionality of the laws making 16 municipalities cities. And just recently, on a mere letter from lawyer Estelito Mendoza, it recalled its decision, reached with finality with no further pleadings to be entertained, ordering the reinstatement of 1,400 Philippine Airlines (PAL) flight attendants. The flight attendants pointed out that the high tribunal had said three times that “PAL’s retrenchment was illegal.”

The issuance of the TRO against De Lima’s hold departure order seems to have been issued with undue and unusual haste when there was no urgency for it as GMA’s health condition, according to the abstracts submitted by her doctors, was not life-threatening. According to some non-partisan lawyers, Corona should have ordered an en banc session to hear the oral arguments of de Lima before issuing the TRO. Instead, he issued the TRO before de Lima could argue against the TRO, raising the suspicion of many that he was really giving the Arroyos the chance to flee before any criminal complaint could be filed against them.

If a mere letter from the counsel of the respondent in a case can make the Corona Court recall a final decision affirmed twice, would it be considered bold of the Secretary of Justice to hold in abeyance an order of the Corona Court until she has argued against the order as is the standard judicial procedure?

Last year the academic world accused the Corona Court of intellectual dishonesty when it absolved Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo of plagiarism. The Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines accused the Supreme Court of abetting a culture of intellectual sloth and dishonesty. The Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations declared plagiarism thievery of intellectual property.

After exculpating del Castillo, the Corona Court issued a show-cause contempt order to UP Law Dean Marvic Leonen and 37 members of the faculty for demanding the resignation of Del Castillo. Associate Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno pointed out that “it is not the place of the Court to seek revenge against those who, in their wish to see reform in the judiciary, have the courage to say what is wrong with it. The Court finds its legitimacy in demonstrating its moral vein case after case, not in flaunting its judicial brawn.”

The Court’s decision declaring the Truth Commission unconstitutional was indicative of that culture of intellectual dishonesty. The Corona Court shot down the proposed Truth Commission because it singled out the GMA administration and made it a vehicle for selective retribution, in violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Yet the same Corona Court did not find the Anti-Graft Commission in violation of that clause of the Constitution when that commission covered only presidential appointees, to the exclusion of other government officials. Corona was the presidential chief of staff and spokesman when then President Arroyo formed the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission in April 2001.

Anyway, that character infirmity of intellectual dishonesty seems to be true also of the Corona Court’s spokesman, Midas Marquez. After Justice Sereno officially advised Marquez that it was wrong for him to say that the TRO on de Lima’s hold departure order against the Arroyos was in full force and effect, he told media that he respected Sereno’s opinion, making it appear that the issue was a matter of opinion, when in fact it was the ruling of the court by a vote of 7-6 that the TRO was deemed suspended pending compliance by GMA and her husband with Condition No. 2 of the TRO.

It is not the first time that Marquez had displayed intellectual dishonesty. Earlier this year, Associate Justices Antonio Carpio and Conchita Carpio Morales asked Marquez to correct his statement that all the justices were given copies of Merceditas Gutierrez’ 60-page petition before they took a vote on the status quo ante order stopping the House impeachment proceeding against Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez. When he was confronted with the fact that some justices had not really been given copies before the deliberation on the order, he said he was just quoting a clerk of the court.

That he was not dismissed for such a blatant lie only shows he is a protected underling. The strain on his face and the crack in his voice when he announced that GMA was barred from leaving the country because RTC Judge Jesus Mupas had issued a warrant of arrest against her only confirmed whose lackey he really is.

That culture of intellectual dishonesty is also manifested by the people who surround GMA. After Dr. Mario Ver, GMA’s bone doctor, had told Judge Mupas last Friday that GMA was well on the way to recovery, ANC’s Pinky Webb asked Raul Lambino, one of GMA’s official spokespersons, how GMA was. Lambino said that GMA was already getting well at home until she was hustled at the airport. It was as if he had not been saying just days before that GMA’s bone disease had worsened, spreading down to the lower part of her spine, threatening not only permanent paralysis but death, that is why the urgency to seek treatment abroad.

Well, it should not surprise anybody that Lambino can prevaricate through his teeth. It should be recalled that in 2006, he started a movement called Sigaw ng Bayan whose aim was to gather enough signatures calling for charter change. The Supreme Court, then headed by Artemio Panganiban, rejected Sigaw ng Bayan’s initiative, calling it a “grand deception” and a “gigantic fraud” on the Filipino people.

Speaking of grand deception, that airport incident where GMA was “hustled” was a grand deception gone wrong. Considering that Elena Bautista Horn was into events management before she joined government, it is not inconceivable that she stage managed the whole thing. She was very visible and grating during that event.

She kept on saying that PNoy had sworn to uphold the Constitution and yet he denied GMA her constitutional right to travel. Horn ignored the fact that GMA had sworn to uphold the same Constitution not once but twice and that it was GMA when she was president who ordered her Secretary of Justice Alberto Agra to issue Circular 41, the same circular Horn finds in violation of the Constitution. That is intellectual dishonesty.

[Bin Diesel]

Corona brought this unto himself when he accepted his appointment.

[Monseratto]

Pnoy and his student council is using the same tactics they used on ex-Ombudsman Merci Gutierez. Doing their undiplomatic ranting very publicly and through the tri-media.

[Altis6453]

I'll beg to disagree that the words used by PNOY vs. Corona and the SC were undiplomatic. You should see the words employed by some "officers of the court" like Raul Gonzales, Oliver Lozano, Alan Paguia, etc. in their pleadings.

The choice of forum may be questionable but the message should be clear: the system of checks and balances, especially with regard to the three branches of government should be respected. If the High Court goes out of its way and participates in politics instead of dispensing justice, then it has lost its credibility as well as its moral ascendancy.

Respect for the Courts, while demanded of lawyers and non-lawyers alike by reason of convention and tradition, should also be earned.

To whom then are the members of the Supreme Court accountable for their misdeeds or biased application of the laws? They are not subject to election and may only be removed forcibly by impeachment---a move that is both long and tedious as it involves not only complex legal processes but is also fraught with political interest.

Is there any instance at all that they are made accountable? The previous attempt to do so (i.e. Justice Del Castillo) for plagiarism was instantly quashed when the SC absolved one of their own and browbeat the complainants afterwards. So, to whom are they made accountable to now?

Certainly, it appears that these justices enjoy a mantle of immunity or protection that is even tougher than parliamentary immunity or executive immunity since they can say they violated no law or committed no wrong. Sadly, they are both the investigators and arbiters of their own bretheren and its sickening how this defeats any attempt to make them answerable.