Are we really dealing with highly placed figures whose actuations can no longer be questioned in any manner, not even in an impeachment trial? What really confounds me is that the very evidences that should serve as proofs of the Chief Justice's loss of credibility as such are being kept, if not moves are underway to declare them as invalid by virtue of their having been acquired in so-called "illegal manner." Even the mere petition to have a woman justice be served to make her a witness to the manipulation of decision-making in the Supreme Court is being blocked by the very Chief Justice himself.
Is that not laughable, the subject of impeachment declaring that he has the control over who should be and not be a witness against him?
I think that as a nation, we deserve to develop our own procedures for conducting an impeachment trial, not necessarily or not by using the jurisprudence of other countries. Remember we are trying a very high profile official whose so-called actuations mar the very reputation so necessary for his being a member of the justice system.
Therefore, for him to remain in his position, he should be immaculately clean. Also, all evidences that can be used to pin him down, regardless if they were acquired via underhanded means, are still EVIDENCES that need to surface. Why bother about how they were acquired at all? What matters most, the preservation of the people's right to have an incorruptible Chief Justice or the right to privacy of the accused?
Here is where I disagree with the flawed legal rules which mar the path to bring about the justice that the people need. Making a tainted official stay in office, just because the evidence against him was acquired illegally, is making the people suffer more than enough. Now which is more important, the right to privacy of the CJ, or the people's right to know the truth?
I think that there is a misunderstanding of the use of such arguments to defend the private life or dollar savings of an individual. That may be true for a private but not for a public individual. As soon as an individual becomes a public official, then he or she should be ready at anytime to face the brickbats. Their lives are no longer theirs but the people's. Should they prove to be less than what is expected of them, then that is their fate.
No one can claim that they can still have an ounce of privacy when becoming an official. Maybe for sleeping 8 hours a night, time for eating and other private acts that should prepare them to do their public job. But they cannot have that luxury to enjoy recreation when the Filipino people have immediate need for liberation from the iniquitous economic situation such as the spiralling prices of oil, of basic necessities.
If only our senator judges had more sociological minds so that they could be attuned to the beats of our society, the simmering disgust of the people for those legal procedures for pinning down the Chief Justice, then, perhaps that impeachment trial would have been over a long time ago.
I really think there is a need to overhaul our justice system itself.
Whatever the outcome of the trial, the people already have an inkling of how the legal system is not really the best for curing corruption. The ultimate of course is people power.
But then that has been misused by some quarters before, and that does not augur well for our future endeavors. One thing is needed for people power to succeed: a credible leader or leaders, one whose heart and mind are in the right place.
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