“To the Prosecution Team, I do know my law. I have not broken any law.” Chief Justice Renato Corona (13 February 2012)

Today Chief Justice Renato C. Corona issued a statement. See the Palace reply to the press statement of Chief Justice Renato Corona below.

PRESS STATEMENT OF CHIEF JUSTICE RENATO C. CORONA (13 February 2012)

Throughout my public career, I have never been involved in any anomaly or scandal. Whatever assets my wife and I have acquired are products of 45 years of toil and honest work.

My wife and I have been privileged to come from families of comfortable means. We grew up never lacking in anything and even enjoyed some luxuries. We earned our academic degrees in some of the best exclusive schools in the country. I went on to earn several postgraduate degrees, including a Master’s degree in Harvard Law School. Our parents provided well for our future. Family resources continue to be available to us anytime.

I had a very successful career in the private sector where I was a top executive before I joined the government. That is public record.

For the past 40 years, my wife and I lived in a house, which was inherited property, and for that reason never had to pay rent or amortization on our residence. This translated to significant savings over forty years.

We have lived simple and frugal lives since we got married more than 40 years ago, to the point of thriftiness. This contributed to how we have been able to accumulate these assets. Other than our house, which we have lived in for almost 40 years, we have never had any other house.

I do not spend on vices like smoking, drinking or gambling, and have been completely devoted to my family. My family has always been my priority.

It pains me to see my family suffer the reckless abandon of a few who want to paint a different Renato C. Corona. I will not allow a career carefully nurtured and a family lovingly cared for in my lifetime to be tarnished by people in the business of lies and falsehoods.But I am determined, with my Defense Team, to explain everything satisfactorily when our turn comes to present our evidence. If you look closely at the documents already marked, the explanations are all there.In the meantime, I would like to request the public not to make any hasty conclusions. This “expose” that the prosecution is trying to herald as another “bombshell” will, in due time, be exposed as another dud like the 45 properties they claimed I owned.

To the Prosecution Team, I do know my law. I have not broken any law. I have no liability to the people and to the government.What my wife and I have is the fruit of hard and honest work for which all taxes have been fully paid. Since the Prosecution alleged wrongdoing, the obligation to prove it is theirs and theirs alone.

Do not extract it from me through means that are foul, coercive and illegal because this can only mean one thing: YOU DID NOT HAVE ANY IOTA OF EVIDENCE AGAINST ME WHEN YOU FILED THE IMPEACHMENT COMPLAINT.

As to the effort of the Prosecution to enlist the assistance of certain patently partisan and inquisitorial Senator-Judges to help obtain the evidence you are digging up only now, not to mention the ruthless, unchristian and unrelenting public persecution through trial by publicity against my family and I, I hope the public will see through your schemes. My entire family is now, among others, being harassed by the BIR. I hope this persecution will never happen to any other official, officer, captain of industry or Juan dela Cruz. I would not wish it on my worst enemy, should I have one.Finally, the President has clearly committed an impeachable offense when he came out swinging by openly urging the Senator-Judges to disobey the Constitution he has personally sworn to uphold.Itong impeachment trial na ito ay isang huwad, isang paghihiganti ng sukdulan at kahiya-hiyang tangka na pigilin ang pagbabahagi ng lupain sa Hacienda Luisita.

Palace reply to the press statement of Chief Justice Renato Corona
On the press statement of Chief Justice Corona
Source : ANC Facebook note

None are so blind as those who refuse to see. At the heart of the impeachment and trial of the Chief Justice is his character. We all know that he accepted a midnight appointment as Chief Justice, when Manuel Moran, a previous Chief Justice, considered it dishonorable to do so. Since that first, fateful step, his march of folly continues unabated.

He is being held to standards the Supreme Court itself has said should be none but the highest, as it said in the case of Magarang v. Judge Galdino B. Jardin Sr.

“[W]hile every public office in the government is a public trust, no position exacts a greater demand on moral righteousness and uprightness of an individual than a seat in the judiciary. Hence, judges are strictly mandated to abide by the law, the Code of Judicial Conduct and other existing administrative policies in order to maintain the faith of the people in the administration of justice.”

Mr. Corona continues to refuse to understand that the impeachment trial is about his fitness to hold the highest post in the Judiciary. He pleads political persecution. He claims the law is on his side. The truth is, he has cast his position in such deep shame, and caused public scandal so damaging to justice and good governance, that he has become the first Chief Justice to be impeached.

Let us remind the Chief Justice of the decision of the Supreme Court in the 1997 case of Narita Rabe v. Delsa M. Flores, where the High Court dismissed a court interpreter from Panabo, Davao for failing to disclose her financial interest in a public market stall in her Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth. The Court said: “We have repeatedly held that although every office in the government service is a public trust, no position exacts a greater demand for moral righteousness and uprightness from an individual than in the Judiciary.”

The standard expected of a Chief Justice was therefore determined not by the House, or the Senate, or anyone else, but the Supreme Court itself. In the aforementioned case it imposed penalties: and yet the Chief Justice, clearly caught lying in his SALN, expects to be let off scot-free.

A statement dripping with malice, proclaiming innocence when the evidence has already begun to pile up, is a poor defense: the facts contradict his protestations. The property titles brought out in the impeachment trial belie the Chief Justice’s tale of merely having one house. He repeatedly echoes the personal attacks against the President made by Arroyo loyalists. Nowhere does he display fidelity to the truth.

His statement today leaves no doubt that the Senate is facing a continuing commission of contempt by the defense and their principal, the Chief Justice, himself: no court of law would tolerate the slanderous statements of the Chief Justice.

The President has consistently upheld his oath: to uphold and defend the Constitution, to execute its laws, and to do justice to every man. In contrast to this, the Chief Justice has no one to blame but himself, if the uncovering of his misdeeds in turn triggers investigations into his financial dealings and mis-declaration of taxes and properties: all of which goes against his own sworn duty to uphold the law, and provide an unimpeachable example to the judiciary.

It goes beyond irony that the Chief Justice is waging a political campaign while pretending to despise politics. He brought politics into the Court; now that the political process enshrined in our Constitution has called him to account, he sheds crocodile tears while attempting to subvert the impeachment court.

February 13, 2012