The impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona finally moved forward Wednesday after senators badgered the Supreme Court’s clerk of court into producing his statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs) covering 2002 to 2010 first as associate justice of the Supreme Court and later head magistrate.
Called in as the first witness for the prosecution, Enriqueta Esguerra-Vidal reluctantly turned over to the impeachment court a brown envelope containing the documents, which Corona’s accusers hoped would prove his alleged ill-gotten wealth.
But former Associate Justice Serafin Cuevas, chief defense counsel, sought to quash the second article of impeachment against Corona with the prosecution’s presentation of his SALNs.
Cuevas noted that Article 2 of the impeachment complaint alleged that the Chief Justice committed culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayed public trust “when he failed to disclose to the public” his SALNs.
“The fact alone that there is SALN is proof enough that he has filed and complied with the rules and regulation on the matter,” Cuevas told the court. “That resolves the problem.”
But Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, presiding officer of the court, said that the submission of Corona’s SALNs was merely in compliance with a subpoena issued to Vidal last Tuesday.
“With respect to the conclusions that will arise from this, that will come later,” Enrile told the defense.
Much of the third day of the trial was spent by a number of senator-judges alternately pressuring and convincing Vidal to produce Corona’s SALNs, which, along with those of other court justices, were under her custody.
Vidal, who assumed her post in September 2010, repeatedly begged off, citing a 1989 rule that seeks to protect members of the judiciary from “deceptive requests for information.”
She told senator-judges that she had relayed the subpoena to the Supreme Court en banc for its “information and authorization.”
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