FIRST DAY Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile (left) promises a fair and impartial impeachment trial for a defiant Chief Justice Renato Corona (right) who attended the first day of the trial. LYN RILLON
The Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, on Monday quashed a key move by the camp of Chief Justice Renato Corona for a preliminary hearing and eventually a stop to his impeachment trial.
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile denied the Corona motion “for want of merit” on the first day of the trial in a ruling that elated the prosecution.
Enrile also dismissed for “lack of standing” a petition by a private lawyer to sanction prosecutors for releasing purported evidence to media earlier.
“We believe that today, it is positive for us, but we don’t look at it as one bit of a victory,” Representative Romero Quimbo, a spokesperson of the prosecution panel, later told reporters.
“We have still a long way to go,” Quimbo said, adding that at least “roadblocks” had been removed.
Accompanied by his wife and supporters, Corona showed up at the gallery despite initial concerns that he would just subject himself to ridicule from prosecutors pushing his ouster for culpable violation of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust and graft and corruption embodied in eight articles of impeachment.
Retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Serafin Cuevas, head of the defense team, said the Chief Justice opted to come to “show respect” to the impeachment court and “show the entire world that he is prepared to enter his defense and convince this honorable body that he is entitled to an acquittal.”
Cuevas entered a plea of not guilty on all the charges against Corona.
“He said he was happy,” said a defense lawyer, Tranquil Salvador III, when asked about how Corona took the opening day’s events. “I saw it in his face. He actually expected what happened.”
Prosecutors from the House of Representatives, who are seeking to oust Corona in a move that has the blessings of President Benigno Aquino III, apparently made sure the Chief Justice would get their message.
“In the name of God, go!” Representative Niel Tupas Jr., head of the prosecution team, said in his opening statement, quoting Oliver Cromwell.
“It is high time for us to put an end to your sitting in that place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice, you are an enemy of good government, as you have sold your country for a mess of potage, and like Judas Escariot betrayed your God for a few pieces of gold. Depart I say, and let us have done with you.”
Tupas was then reminded by Enrile to address the presiding officer, not Corona or anybody else in the trial. Corona sat stony faced beside his wife at the far end of the VIP section in the session hall.
Enrile opened the trial at exactly 2:13 p.m., more than a month after lawmakers led by Mr. Aquino’s Liberal Party mounted the impeachment complaint against the country’s top magistrate.
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