Embarrassment of riches

One, before the trial resumed last Monday, several senators again reminded the world about the impropriety of the prosecution bringing its case before the media, particularly in the form of press conferences. The prosecution had been warned, they said. If they didn’t comply they could be cited for contempt.

True enough, there’s something a little askew about prosecution holding press conferences before and after the trial. They should leave that to commentators who are relatively independent, or at least are not thoroughly compromised by the very nature of their positions.

But it gets a little more complicated outside of press conferences. The proscription presumes that reporters are a passive lot who wait for their sources of news to drop bread crumbs on them. When the opposite is true: Reporters will badger you with questions, even, or especially, of the speculative type. That’s what has gotten a lot of officials in hot water, answering those types of questions and finding themselves on the front pages next day as having offered those thoughts voluntarily. The prosecutors get to be asked questions about where they are going with their witnesses, they are perfectly within their rights to answer.

It’s certainly beyond the impeachment’s court’s scope to prevent them from doing so. The impeachment court’s power to discipline its ranks ends where the freedom of the press begins. The prosecution though would do well to observe some niceties and stop looking too eager to bludgeon their case home. It makes them look rather insecure, and could backfire in the end by making the defense, and their client, look like the underdog.

Two, Serafin Cuevas asked witness Giovanni Ng to pay a little more attention to his questions as he was getting on in years and couldn’t remember them himself. If he himself had been paying a little more attention to the proceedings, he would have seen that Jinggoy Estrada had already made the case for him. His cross had to do with whether or not the eye-popping discount Megaworld gave Renato Corona for a penthouse in Bellagio – a whopping 40 percent – was really eye-popping. Estrada had asked questions along those lines earlier, only to get answers he wasn’t banking on. Ng opined it wasn’t.

Ng said the discount owed to certain blemishes in Corona’s unit, the fixing of which would have cost Megaworld time and money, and the fact that 2008, when Corona obtained the property, was the pit of a global recession. It was reasonable to offer that kind of discount. Of course, it would help the prosecution if it could show that Megaworld had pending cases before the Supreme Court when Corona transacted for the property, but they would never be able to prove wrongdoing. Quite simply, Megaworld is not the best source to pin down Corona on that issue. What business will readily admit it effectively bribed a chief justice?

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