A MAGNIFICENT STRATEGY OF THE CJ'S LAWYERS

Not a few of CJ Corona's detractors are saying his defense team should have not presented the Ombudsman and Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, et al, because, after all, the prosecutors had rested their case, and that it was incorrect strategy for the defense to have done what they did.  I disagree!  On the contrary, that was a truly spectacular game plan on the defense side.

 It's true that before the Ombudsman's testimony the prosecutors had rested their case, and indeed, at that point in time, there was reason to believe   the prosecution could have yet mustered the 16 votes required to convict Corona.  In my view, PNoy's drum beaters fully realized this grim fact, although they will never admit it.  They had therefore to devise a new way to create some doubts in the public's and the senators' minds on the CJ's guilt or innocence.  And the Ombudsman was the one chosen to do that.  I will bet my three balls -- yes, I have three -- that even the prosecutors would not want to put the Ombudsman on the witness stand, otherwise they would have not allowed the defense to out-race them in that regard. It was enough for the CJ's detractors that the Ombudsman had shouted her unverified charges to the four winds, and thus confuse the public and the judges.  Alam na naman natin ang PNoy, he tends to swallow hook, line and sinker everything that is sensational. It is a matter of plain common sense that if the Ombudsman had not been presented and was allowed to articulate his "lantern of lies" only to the public and the media, the most that Corona's camp could do was to try to refute those charges also before the public and the media.  And that would be not as convincing as to refute those charges before the senator-judges themselves.   

And so, the defense decided to put the Ombudsman under oath, and to let her enumerate her charges one by one.  Those charges, said inside a court of law and not in the arena of public opinion, would then serve the basis for the defense to prove the Ombudsman's unverified charges downright wrong, as the CJ also testifies under oath. .  Actually, the defense's real game plan was to present first Hontiveros-Baraquel et al, and make them admit that none of them had personal knowledge of the bases of their charges, when they filed their respective complaints with the Ombudsman.  With that, the Ombudsman would have been hard-pressed to explain why he outright took those charges hook line and sinker.  A bit unfortunately, however, that original game plan -- meaning Baraquel et al first, then the Ombudsman --did not exactly push  through because Enrile was "atat na atat" to hear the Ombudsman and, thus, ruled that the Ombudsman be presented first.  At any rate, I think it only took some minor adjustments on the line of questioning of the defense lawyers for them to still achieve their original objective.  As things are, the CJ would be in the best position to refute the Ombudsman's charges one by one before a court of law, not of public opinion, and never would she have any chance for a rebuttal.  Indeed, I must congratulate Corona's lawyers for such a very magnificent strategy.

Of course, only God really knows if the CJ had, enough aces under his sleeves. Given his obviously very high spirits, I believe he has,  and will be able to prove, with flying colors, that all of the Ombudsman's charges wrong.  Indeed,  my hopes run high that PNoy and his anti-Corona lapdogs is on for the biggest, and most disappointing, surprise in their lives.