TRUE MEASURE OF CHARACTER

It was unfortunate that so many people had outright criticized Corona for signing a waiver on his bank accounts on condition that all  the other 188 prosecutors who signed the impeachment case plus one senator should also sign the same waiver. In my humble opinion, hindi dapat karaka-rakang inismiran ng balana ang conditional waiver na ito ni Corona, without first analyzing the circumstances more deeply.  Consider this:

1) Corona main position was that bank accounts, especially dollar deposits, are declared absolutely confidential by RA 6426 and should not therefore be revealed in a generally-accepted public document called SALN.  This issue will continue to be a  debatable issue among lawyers, but vainly.  Under our justice system, it's only the Supreme Court, not the Impeachment Court, that may rule on this issue with finality.
2) In his testimony, Corona asserted that whatever moneys he has accumulated in his bank accounts all came from legitimate sources, for which he had paid appropriate income taxes to the government since the banks outright withhold and remit to BIR all interests earned from such bank deposits.
3) The true and underlying purpose of the SALN is not as much its clerical accuracy as to ensure that public officials do not enrich themselves in office.  Proof is, the Civil Service Commissions, the branch of government that provide rules for the filing of SALN,  allows the filer to correct certain errors in his SALN for as long as
the errors are not culpable.  In turn, an act is culpable if its commission has been dictated by an ulterior motive to gain something from committing the act.  Culpability must therefore first be proven because an act is considered impeachable.
4) There can be no gainsaying the plain truth that today, and especially years ago when the dollar-peso exchange rates were as volatile as the price of oil in the market place, money market has been  a popular form or mode of investment for people who can afford.  There is cogent reason to believe that most of our public officials do have their respective foreign currency accounts.  Meanwhile, a certain CPA-Lawyer says that in all her 32  years of working with the BIR, he does not recall of any public official who revealed his dollar account in his SALN.
5) Corona's conditional waiver was for a two fold purpose.  First, to test the integrity of his accusers by inviting them to prove to the whole word that they are not equally guilty of the offense they are charging him. Second, that is also an appeal to the conscience of the 23 senators who will judge him.  I mean, if you do also maintain a dollar account which you did not include in your SALN, would you have the conscience to convict Corona for exactly the same offense that you yourself is doing?  Of course, some such senators still migh still convict the CJ, perhaps saying to himself that anyway nobody knows or will find out that I also have dollar accounts that I didn't declare in my SALN.   Then, such senators would have been measured and found wanting.  I mean, I am suddenly reminded of the words of a writer whose name has already escape my memory: "The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out."

Corona's detractors will readily say such conditional waiver is not acceptable in the rules of court since it is not the prosecutors who are charged. Fine! But why is their application of the rules of court selective?  One  recalls that whenever Corona's counsel invokes the need to give Corona due process as provided under the rules of court, his detractors would outright say, "Ah, this is an impeachment case, not an ordinary civil or criminal case in an ordinary court"  Now, if the defense cannot cite the same reason, i.e. relaxing certain rules of court that need not apply to  Corona's impeachment case, then, doesn't HYPOCRISY characterize all these proceedings?