GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews/30 May) – Renato Corona, now technically the former Supreme Court Chief Justice after he was pronounced guilty in his impeachment trial, quickly morphed from an arrogant and defiant man of immense power to a meek and a very beaten man he could not even muster enough strength and courage to be present on his judgment day in less than five months.
He took a brief rebound after his disastrous and contemptible walkout from the Senate impeachment court. But by then, whatever credibility and believability left in him were already gone.
And so thought 20 of the 23 senators who ruled and said he no longer deserved a day in his former court.
History is replete with lessons how hard and quickly the high and the mighty could fall out of power.
Corona is his own lesson.
More than anything else, his trial was not all about whether he committed impeachable offenses. The verdict was not all about evidences or the lack of it. Nor was it all about the intolerance of one man over the other.
No evil forces can ever subdue and prevail over the virtuous and upright moral man. Invert ably, no one can put a good and righteous man out of his exalted position.
Corona was a wrong man in a wrong time.
He desperately so coveted, to the point of pathetic obsession, a seat in the Supreme Court it took him 10 years to realize it. When he was already there, he wanted nothing less than becoming the primus inter pares – first among equals – its supreme and chief.
He got it from the wrong president at the wrong time. In fact, he should not have gotten it, much more accepted it. But he got it and got away with it anyway, or so he thought.
In the two years that he was in the position to steer the Supreme Court, his only saving grace was to side with the farmer-tenants of Hacienda Luisita for which he got the ire of his supposed co-equal in government. But no mistake about it, he was not impeached because of choosing to break up the economic base of the Cojuangco side of the family of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino.
He was impeached because Corona chose to be on the wrong side of fairness in almost all major decision of the Supreme Court when he became its chief. He blatantly displayed his gratitude towards his benefactor and benefactors. He may not be faulted for defending his court and himself. But he cannot be forgiven for treating like it was his fiefdom and acting like – well – its fief. He cannot dismantle one’s fief, build his own and yet expect to be beyond reproach and destruction.
Corona could have taken the high ground and prove that he is a man of proven integrity, independence, impartiality and morally fit that are required of his position. He could just have maintained his silence and prove his detractors wrong by steering the Supreme Court into the path of righteousness and not giving them any cloud of doubt. By emulating Cesar’s wife. By administering justice where and when it is due.
Instead he chose to be on the warpath and indulge his accusers in a war of attrition – courting confrontation as often as he blinks his eyes. He cannot even keep peace within his own court – living in his own fears and creating his own ghosts. Yet he acted like he was its indomitable commander in chief.
When he was impeached by the House of Representatives, Corona began to live by the day. Instead of taking the high ground, he dug himself in the trenches and ultimately his own graveyard. In war, there will be victors and the vanquished.
Corona fought the war he cannot win because he sorely lacked the character to do it.
Yes, in the end it was all about character. And Corona was found wanting of it. (Edwin G. Espejo writes for www.asiancorrespondent.com.)
