The Chief Justice is taking the public for fools. The breadth of his possessions is not the only issue, it is also the fact that he failed to include them in his SALNs. Not only once, but repeatedly over the years, despite those documents being sworn statements, and despite his own court having ruled in at least two instances that lower-level government bureaucrats deserved jail time for even minor discrepancies and omissions in their SALNs. The only time Corona’s multimillion-peso deposits and posh properties became relevant to the question of his fitness for his august office was when his own SALNs showed he had a tendency to hide, shade over and fudge the extent of his properties.
That capacity to dissemble—okay, to lie—when his very office demands the highest standards of rectitude, integrity and respectability from its occupant is what is at issue. Not Corona’s ownership per se of his possessions. That distinction becomes even more crucial now that PSBank’s officers have revealed two more multimillion-peso accounts under Corona’s name apart from the previously identified ones totaling some P20 million, and another Bank of the Philippine Islands account of P12 million—while Corona’s SALN for December 2010 only indicated P3.5 million in assets. Two of these newly disclosed accounts Corona had terminated on Dec. 12, 2011, on the same day he was impeached by the House of Representatives.
Another day, another revelation of undeclared assets. Will Corona finally talk about them? No use holding our breath there. By his refusal until now to account for his wealth vis-à-vis his SALNs, by choosing to run to his peers at the Supreme Court rather than simply open his dollar deposits if indeed he had nothing to hide, Corona has no one to blame but himself for the abysmal regard much of the public has for his honesty and fealty to the truth. “In due course” just won’t cut it.
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