In a span of 26 years, Filipinos have witnessed three impeachment trials. The first was on President Erap Estrada which ended being aborted. The second was on Chief Justice Renato Corona, which resulted in a conviction. The third is the ongoing trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.
To put color to the boredom of listening to the arguments and counterarguments, let me compare the previous trials with the current one. This comparison is made even if we are aware that we are still on the 13th day of the ongoing trial.
Obviously, there are similarities: Basically, an impeachment process will always be both judicial and political, whether it is done in December of year 2000 or July of 2026. Secondly, the trials then and now all involve money in millions. It may be money from jueteng, discrepancy in the Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) and the use of confidential funds: they all involve lots of money. Thirdly and less seriously, whether it is 2012 or 2026, Lito Lapid will remain silent. He spoke in the impeachment of Chief Justice Corona only at the end to explain his vote. For many who are turned off by the antics of Robinhood, the silence of Lapid is actually golden.
But let me focus on the differences which will obviously be incomplete. The reader can make his own list.
First, the defense team today is not headed by any lawyer with a large amount of gravitas. Remember that Erap was defended by former solicitor general Estelito Mendoza and former chief justice Andres Narvasa. Corona’s lead defense counsel was former associate justice Serafin Cuevas. In contrast, Sara’s lead lawyer, Atty. Sheila Sison, may be intelligent and spokesperson Atty. Michael Poa made a good account of himself but they are not in the same league as the lawyers of Estrada and Corona. The rawness of the defense team was evident when veteran litigator Lorna Kapunan virtually toyed around with Atty. Kristine Ferrer. The young attorney looked like she was an on-the-job trainee.
Second, so far there has not been any quotable lines from either the prosecution or the defense similar to Joker Arroyo’s “…we cannot have our country run by a thief.” The opening statement of Joker was historical and got included in an anthology of famous speeches in the Philippines.
Thirdly, no senator-judge has gone ballistic in the current trial. In the previous trials, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago fired from all cylinders. She caused the removal from the gallery of two ladies whom she thought were laughing at her. (Robinhood also thought that some prosecutors were laughing at him, but he could not have asked them to leave.) Atty. Vitalino Aguirre, who later infamously became an apologist for the bloody war against drugs, got a tongue-lashing from the feisty lady senator when he covered his ears while she was pontificating.
Fourthly, while the senator judges were also biased then — after all, it is impossible for our minds to be a tabula rasa — they tried to hide these prejudices. Not so in the current trial. There is hardly any pretense of neutrality. And when one senator called himself neutral, the description fell terribly flat. To cite just one example, Sen. Imee Marcos seemingly wanted to impress Vice President Duterte and not her colleagues when she implied that the disbursing officers be blamed and not Sara. Laglagan na ba?
Fifthly, there was no court jester in the previous trials. But this time, we can trust Robinhood to provide some comic relief. From an appeal to the prosecution not to be one-sided, to a query whether a state auditor does other things aside from auditing, he gives us reasons to laugh. However, there is a difference between traditional court jesters and Robinhood. The laughter provided by the former came from their wit, while the laughter coming from Robinhood comes from the lack of it. The jokes of court jesters were a commentary of the state of affairs. In the case of Robinhood, the jokes are unintentional and are commentaries of the state of his own mind.
In this piece, I quickly enumerated some similarities and then proceeded to point out the differences. There is one which remains to be seen whether it be in list of similarities or differences. In the Erap trial, Loren Legarda thought that it was necessary to open a sealed envelope to ferret out the truth. In the 2012 trial, Sen. Pia Cayetano reasoned that that failure of Corona to declare US$2.4 million in his SALN was not a minor omission. Will the stand of these two senators be the same? Or will they do an about-face? Abangan!
