WHAT MY CRYSTAL BALL TELLS ME

There's no question the Ombudsman's testimony on CJ Corona's dollar account transactions was damning -- although,  methinks, eventually, not as much to Corona as to the integrity of the "conductor" of that well-orchestrated "symphony of lies": PNoy Aquino.  No matter how PNoy denies it, the public has not been born only yesterday not to know that it was upon the President's behest that the House had filed the impeachment case,  which from the very outset was so defective, it started with 8 complaints and ended up in only 3, of which 3, only 1, that on failure to correctly disclose his SALN, has managed to survive, yet inside the ICU at this point in time.  The public also knew from the beginning that the impeachment case was intended not really to impeach the CJ per se,  but merely to force him, by character-assassinating him in the eyes of the public, to voluntarily resign.  This impression should draw clear credence from the alleged 45 properties the prosecutors had originally kept shouting to the four winds the CJ owned but did not declare in his SALN.  What happened next were pure history: - those 45 properties did not really exist, having finally collapsed to just 5 or 6, which in turn were precisely what the CJ had kept saying from day-one as all he owned. The impeachment case, the public also knew from the start, was truly so defective, it started with 8 complaints, eventually reduced to just 3, but of which 3, only one, that on the alleged failure to correctly file his SALN, had managed to survive -- yet clearly in a moribund stage at this point in time.  Alas, if the public essentially realizes all these, the 23 senator-judges are certainly not Marines to be told otherwise about the real score behind the CJ's impeachment.  Of course there are about 3 to 5 amongst them (I need not mention their names, the readers surely know them) who -- pitpitin mo man ang bayag, ika nga -- will vote for conviction on PNoy's behest.  But even these known lapdogs of Pnoy know that their number is miles too far from the 16 votes constitutionally needed to convict the CJ.

The sudden appearance of the Ombudsman to testify on the CJ's alleged money laundering activities is to my mind  the PNoy government's desperate and last-ditch attempt to force the CJ to step down, or alternatively towards the last stretch of the trial,  to create doubts in the minds of the senator-judges regarding his innocence or guilt.  But I am sure not a few bankers had almost died laughing at the Ombudsman's power-point presentation.  It's a pity COA commissioner Heidi Mendoza allowed herself to be a party to the Ombudsman's downright incredible numbers.  It's  equally pathetic that Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales, who said, "No one may intimidate me!" when he was sworn in to that office, and whom I thought to be belonging to a different breed of public officials, had now shed off her true colors.  I was wrong.  For me, Carptio-Morales is to Pinoy Aquino as Mercedita Gutierrez had been to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.  At any rate, my hopes run high the CJ will be able to shed the true lights on this and, thus, finally eclipse the Ombudsman's "lantern of lies."

Having said the above, I suddenly recalled the P35.0 million money of the Basa-Guidote Enterprise, Inc. held in trust for a decade by the CJ's wife.  The Coronas did not own that money, of course, and hence need not declare it in  the CJ's SALN.  But if I were in the CJ's shoes, I would not allow that money to simply remain in the bank just like that, earning very minimal interests.  I would have converted those P35.0 million into dollars, open a number of dollar accounts and, through the assistance of a financial investment or banking expert, let that money earn considerably more interest incomes in dollars.  Hence, the continuous deposits and withdrawals that were highlighted by the Lady Ombudsman in her testimony.  Such banking transactions are definitely not classifiable as "money laundering".  Neither might the CJ be faulted for not including the annual balances of those dollar deposits in his SALN for the simple reason that that money did not belong to him, but was only held in trust by his wife for the account of the Basa-Guidote Enterprises.    

I am not saying this was what really happened. Whatsoever had happened, no one, not even the CJ, may ever change.  Neither, certainly, do I profess to be a "manghuhula" in this regard.  The above are simply my, let me call it, intelligent guess.  Suffice it to say that, at the end of the day, I have always believed that the Chief Justice had not been appointed such -- virtually, admit it or not, the best lawyer of the land --  if he did not know what is right or wrong, moral or immoral, before the eyes of the law and of God.