The Impeachment of CJ Renato Corona – How It Started
Clearly, the fight between Pnoy and CJ Corona, is not between the Executive and Judiciary, nor between Pnoy and GMA…the real bone of contention here is Hacienda Luisita!
March 2010: First Blood
GMA appointed Justice Renato Corona as Chief Justice to replace CJ Reynato Puno.
This was concurred by nine justices in the premise that the judiciary is not covered by Article VII, Section 15 of the 1987 Constitution, which prevents an outgoing president from making appointments to government posts two months before the elections.
Presidential candidate Aquino said he would not recognize the midnight appointment of CJ Corona.
This is the reason why he did not take his oath of office with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as mandated by the 1986 constitution.
June 2010: “Watch Me”
The Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura [UMA] asked CJ Corona to recall the TRO issued by the SC in June 2006. The TRO stops the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council and Department of Agrarian Reform [DAR] from revoking the stock distribution option offered by the Cojuangco-Aquino family. The TRO also stops DAR from distributing the 6,453-hectare sugar plantation to the farmers beneficiaries.
“We humbly submit to your Honorable Office our appeal asking the Supreme Court to act with dispatch and resolve the controversial agrarian case of Hacienda Luisita in favor of agrarian reform beneficiaries,” read the letter of the UMA.
CJ Corona orders the review of the Hacienda Luisita Labor Case.
July 2010: The Soup Thickens
On July 30 2010 President Aquino created the Philippine Truth Commission [PTC] under Executive Order No. 1 (EO 1). The PTC is tasked to investigate corruption scandals in the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is headed by retired Chief Justice Hilario G. Davide Jr.
Lagman et. al. filed petition with the Supreme Court, against EO 1, citing the PTC as a duplication of the quasi-judicial powers of the Office of the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice, hence the PTC is an “exercise in futility.”
With a 10-5 vote the Supreme Court declared the PTC is “illegal” and ruled with finality on July 26, 2011 the unconstitutionality of PTC. Majority of the justices held that EO 1 violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution because it singles out the investigation of the reported graft and corruption in the PGMA administration. [4 of the dissenting justices are GMA appointees]
Thus, SC declared “unconstitutional” and nullifies with finality the creation of the Philippine Truth Commission.
The SC ruling matched the opinions of Senators Miriam Defensor Santiago and Joker Arroyo that the PTC is a veiled attempt to circumvent the rules of the land to get back at PGMA.
November 2011: Goodbye Hacienda
The Supreme Court, through its resolution G.R. No. 171101, has ordered Hacienda Luisita Inc. [HLI] to distribute the 5,000 hectares of Hacienda Luisita, to the farmer beneficiaries who have tilled the land for decades.
In addition, the Supreme Court directed HLI to pay farmers a total of P1.3 billion for the sale of three large parcels of land.
- P500 million it received from Luisita Realty Inc. for the sale of 200 hectares of land in 1996;
- P750 million for the sale of the Luisita Industrial Park; and
- P80,511,500 for the sale of the 80.51-hectare lot for the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway road network.
November 15, 2011: The Last Nail In the Coffin
SC, in an 8-5 vote, issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the watch list order (WLO) issued against GMA and her husband Jose Miguel T. Arroyo, and others who are facing investigation on the alleged poll fraud in the 2004 and 2007 elections in Mindanao.
December 2011: Impeach Corona
December 12, 2011, it took 2 hours for 188 congressmen/women to sign the impeachment complaint against CJ Corona.
According to SC Spokesman Marquez, what congress did was against Section 2, Rule II of the Rules of Procedure in Impeachment Proceedings. The rule dictates that:
“Impeachment shall be initiated by the filing and subsequent referral to the Committee on Justice of: (a) a verified complaint for impeachment filed by any Member of the House of Representatives; or (b) a verified complaint filed by any citizen upon a resolution of endorsement by any Member thereof; or (c) a verified complaint or resolution of impeachment filed by at least one-third (1/3) of all Members of the House.”
- Corona allegedly betrayed the public trust through his track record marked by partiality and subservience in cases involving the Arroyo administration from the time of his appointment as Supreme Court justice and until his dubious appointment as a “midnight” chief justice to the present.
- Corona allegedly committed culpable violation of the constitution and/or betrayed the public trust when he failed to disclose to the public his Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth as required under Sec. 17, Article XI of the 1987 Constitution.
- Corona allegedly committed culpable violations of the Constitution and betrayed the public trust by failing to meet and observe the stringent standards under Article VIII, section 7 (3) of the Constitution that provides that “[a] member of the judiciary must be a person of proven competence, integrity, probity, and independence.”
- Corona supposedly betrayed the public trust and/or committed culpable violation of the constitution when it blatantly disregarded the principle of separation of powers by issuing a “status quo ante” order against the House of Representatives in the case concerning the impeachment of then- Ombudsman Merceditas Navarro-Gutierrez.
- Corona allegedly committed culpable violations of the Constitution through wanton arbitrariness and partiality in consistently disregarding the principle of res judicata and in deciding in favor of gerry-mandering in the cases involving the 16 newly-created cities, and the promotion of Dinagat Island into a province.
- Corona supposedly betrayed the public trust by arrogating unto himself, and to a committee he created, the authority and jurisdiction to improperly investigate a justice of the Supreme Court for the purpose of exculpating him. Such authority and jurisdiction is properly reposed by the constitution in the House of Representatives via impeachment.
- Corona supposedly betrayed the public trust through his partiality in granting a temporary restraining order in favor of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her husband Jose Miguel Arroyo in order to give them an opportunity to escape prosecution and to frustrate the ends of justice, and in distorting the supreme court decision on the effectivity of the TRO in view of a clear failure to comply with the conditions of the Supreme Court’s own TRO.
- Corona allegedly betrayed the public trust and/or committed graft and corruption when he failed and refused to account for the judiciary development fund (JDF) and special allowance for the judiciary (SAJ) collections.
elinonapigkit
I Will Make It Happen 
“Clearly, the fight between Pnoy and CJ Corona, is not between the Executive and Judiciary, nor between Pnoy and GMA…the real bone of contention here is Hacienda Luisita!”
Hacienda Luisita? How did you know that? How did you come up w/ that conclusion(w/ exclamation point) if there is still pending motion in the SC and the case is not yet put in its finality? This is absolutely a BIAS opinion. No wonder you have no readers. I was just redirected in this website when I clicked your username in PDI forum. Anyway that’s your opinion I will still respect that.
The order of the events above is WRONG.
The order will mislead your readers about the sequence of the events that lead to impeachment trial of Corona. Your wrong sequence above is self-serving just to give absolute support to your opinion(w/c is HLI).
The order of the events must be like this:
November 15, 2011: The Last Nail In the Coffin (TRO)
November 2011: Goodbye Hacienda (November 22, 2011 to be exact)
December 2011: Impeach Corona
From the correct orders I mentioned above, your readers may think about the possible reason of Corona’s impeachment, the TRO, HLI or even PTC.
I will give my opinion on the correct order of events above..
November 15, 2011: The Last Nail In the Coffin (TRO)
The executive branch(DOJ) defied the TRO. De Lima’s office didn’t receive yet the copy of TRO formally, the reason why BOI stopped Arroyos to exit. You didn’t even mention this point to your opinion above. This point is very very important…
November 2011: Goodbye Hacienda (November 22, 2011 to be exact)
(For the past many years, SC headed by CJ Corona finally made deliberation and decision about HLI case.The decision was made just a week after the DOJ’s defiance of TRO. This could be the revenge of CJ Corona due to DOJ’s defiance of TRO.)
December 2011: Impeach Corona
(The impeachment was being prepared even before the TRO and HLI decision. On the recent media blitz of CJ, he even admitted that he heard last Nov. 2011 about the impeachment case against him by the House. The House rushed the impeachment right after the TRO. )
From the opinions I mentioned above, the impeachment of Corona was more because of TRO…
Sir/Madam,
Thank you for your comment. It was very enlightening indeed.
And I appreciate your respect of my opinion and you can expect the same from me.
It is not only I who have a premise that Hacienda Luisita is the bone of contention of the impeachment of CJ Corona. Several opinion makers of the Inquirer share my views.
Nevertheless, the chronology of events written in my blog clearly lead us to the conclusion that Hacienda Luisita pushed Pnoy to impeach CJ Corona.
Sometime between June and July of 2010 CJ Corona was invited by Pnoy in the house of his sister to “consult” about the Truth Commission. It could be surmised that the case of Hacienda Luisita was also discussed.
And if we are going to examine the En Banc Resolution of the Supreme Court G.R. No. 171101, we will find it was promulgated July 15, 2011 ahead of anything else that leads to the impeachment of CJ Corona. And this becomes the foundation of my position why Hacienda Luisita was the bone of contention in the Impeachment trial of CJ Corona.
Sir/Madam, I am sadden by your comment “No wonder you have no readers.”
It might interest you to now that I wrote my blogs for my own consumption, my own way of THINKING ALOUD, that is why you will not find any advertisements in my website and I am proud to say that I have many friends that read my blogs.
Much more I am fulfilled to know intellectual people like you find time to read my blog and took effort in sharing their thoughts with me, I am really honored.
Again, thank you and GOD bless.
PS: By the way, I cc your email address with my reply, unfortunately I got a “failure notice”:
“Sorry, we were unable to deliver your message to the following address. :
Remote host said: 554 delivery error: dd This user doesn’t have a yahoo.com account (jackandjillphillss@yahoo.com) [0] – mta1070.mail.sk1.yahoo.com [BODY]”