By VERA FILES
ON January 16, 2012, Renato C. Corona, the country’s 23rd Chief Justice, will go on trial before the Senate. The charges: culpable violation of the Constitution, betrayal and public trust, and graft and corruption.
On December 12, 2011, Corona became the first Chief Justice and the third public official to be impeached by the House of Representatives in the country’s history. His perceived partiality to former President and now Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was chiefly his undoing. Arroyo herself is under arrest for electoral fraud in connection with the 2007 elections and graft and corruption arising from the scandalous $329 million national broadband network between the Philippine government and China’s ZTE Corp.
The trial of President Joseph Estrada, the first public official ever impeached over charges of plunder, among others, was aborted on Jan. 16, 2001 when the House prosecutors walked out from the proceedings, to protest the perceived bias of the 11 senator-judges, triggering the second People Power that led to Estrada’s ouster.
Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez , impeached in March 2011 over allegations of her office’s underperformance and failure to act on several cases during then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration, never went on trial. She resigned before the trial could start.
VERA Files has collated frequently asked questions about Corona’s impeachment to help the public understand what happened in the House of Representatives and will happen in the Senate. (Download PDF file.) 