WILL HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF?

It was, and is, clear enough that the one and only consuming mission of the prosecution and the administration has always been not as much to impeach the Chief Justice per se as to merely make him resign his post.  That's why all of the character assassinations against  Coronal were, and still are, being done not before the senate impeachment court but before the media and the public.  The thing is the CJ did  not resign, and apparently never will.

One recalls that in the beginning, the prosecutors called a press conference to announce before all and sundry that the Chief Justice had 45 properties he did not declare his SALN.  The CJ countered those were all baseless, saying he had only 6 properties, and all were recorded in his SALN.   It turned out that he had indeed only six, all the rest being more imagined than real.  Even so, the prosecutors are still questioning the one located in the Bonifacio Ridge, which the CJ had bought in 2003 but which appeared only 2010.  It turned out, as admitted by the developers themselves that the formal acceptance by the Coronas of that property did happen only in 2009, owing to several defects the Coronas found in the property which, in turn, prevented them taking formal possession thereof.

Allow me to present my personal views on this.   The prosecution, and even some senator-judges, said that the failure to declare that property in 2004 through 2009 constituted an impeachable offense.  They said that at the very least, the CJ should have reported an Accounts Receivable in his SALN, in accordance with standard accounting procedures. That maybe right, under the so-called double-entry system of accounting.  For, indeed, what the CJ did was to follow the so-called single-entry system, otherwise known as "kuwenta beho,"  most commonly seen in a sari-sari store's records.  To illustrate, when a store owner sells something on account, he only records the name of the person and the amount he owed, not as much the kind of article sold.  What only matters here is to remember the buyer's name and the amount due from him..  In the CJ's case, methinks the Deed of Sale covering the Bonifacio Ridge property was sufficient record for a single-entry transaction.  There was neither any ulterior intent on his part to conceal the property, as it did appear in his SALN, only lately, because of the property's defects which the developer was able to fix only in 2009.  It would  have been different had the impeachment trial begun without the property being yet in his SALN.  Now, we can perhaps charge the CJ, a lawyer and not an account,  for his ignorance of double entry bookeeping (even as, if we ask any CPA he will readily agree that single-entry accounting is also acceptable).  But may that ignorance be called "culpable" as to be "impeachable?"   Definitely not.  And so, what more may the prosecutors charge the CJ of with respect to property ownership?  Nothing more!

When the impeachment trial took its Holy Week break, there was every reason to believe the prosecution's case had reached the moribund stage.  With the prosecution having then rested its case, and the defense continuing to present its own witnesses and arguments, it was loud and clear that the impeachment case against Corona was gradually but surely collapsing, and that for the prosecutors to get a 16 out of 23 votes to convict Corona would certainly be an "impossible dream."

Now suddenly comes the Ombudsman testifying that according to the AMLC, Corona had millions of dollars in the bank.  It need not pass unnoticed that of the twenty three senator-judges, there were only three (Drilon, Pangilinan and Guingona, all Aquino lapdogs) who swallowed the Ombudsman's numbers hook, line and sinker.    The questions of most other senators dwelt on whether or not the Ombudsman, the AMLAC and the COA were being used by the Administration in its last-ditch effort to pin down the Chief Justice.
Likewise, whether or not the Ombudsman's testimony, which was clearly not part of the original Articles of Impeachment filed by the House could be admissible for this impeachment trial.(or  for another impeachment case one year from now) was what the senator-judges agreed to resolve in their next caucus.

To be objective, it is certainly premature now to pass judgment on the Ombudsman's testimony and its impact on the CJ's fate.  In the interim, let it suffice for me to say that the CJ has called the Ombudsman's testimony a "lantern of lies" in the same way he did call the 45 properties he allegedly owned totally baseless.  And so, at this point in time, one cannot help but ask: "Will history repeat itself or not?  Well, as comics writers tend to say in the last frame: Abangan!