Mrs. Corona : The Wind Beneath My Wings- CORONA

This is a press statement from Corona’s defense team

“Tina has been the wind beneath my wings in the last 42 years,” said Chief Justice Renato C. Corona as he joined his wife and family members in a mass held by court employees to its embattled chief at the Supreme Court building.

This is the Chief Justice’s first public appearance after his wife, Cristina, broke her silence on the supposed U.S. property owned by daughter Charina.

“If my daughter has (property), that’s hers,” she told reporters in a chance interview.

“I have always believed that the two greatest gifts God can give a man are, one, a happy family, and two, a loving, dedicated wife. I already have both, so I don’t need anything more than this,” Corona emphasized.

Earlier, the Chief Justice told the graduates of the Philippine Law School the life story of his father, Atty. Juan Molinyawe Corona, who remained very simple and humble to the very end—two traits that he inherited.

“We have lived simple and frugal lives since we got married in 1970, to the point of thriftiness. We lived in an inherited property, and for that reason, we never paid rent and saved, for the past four decades.

“What my wife and I have is the fruit of hard and honest work for which all taxes have been fully paid. The same goes to my daughter Charina, a licensed physical therapist in the United States, who even manages to have two jobs and her husband who has a decent job in America,” Corona added.

On Tuesday, a newspaper bannered the supposed changing of the Chief Justice’s story on the U.S, property when he said, via text message, that his daughter acquired the property “dirt cheap with a 30-year-to-pay term at the height of the mortgage foreclosures in the U.S.”

The Chief Justice, however, clarified that he never changed his story as the question on the ownership of the alleged U.S. properties was directed to him and his wife, and he flatly denied it as a response to the question posed by reporters.

Meanwhile, Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III said that admitting the U.S. properties as evidence would be a long shot.

“The property is not even in the name of the respondent,” Pimentel said in an interview.

Defense lawyer Rico Paolo Quicho, on the one hand, challenged blogger Raissa Robles, to present a certificate of title as the only proof of ownership of property.