By Diego Morra
Defense counsel Sheila Sison chose to argue before the Senate impeachment court that Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio was elected by 32-million Filipino voters and by convicting her all or any of the four impeachment charges would be tantamount to impeaching the sovereign will of the Filipino electorate. As a “tisay” (a term reserved for the students and graduates of the Quezon City Science High School), Sison is expected to be rigorous, exacting and trained on the scientific method.
Yet, her opening statement only hews closely to the general character of Sara’s legal theory, which is to deny everything, refuse to debunk allegations and accuse complainants of trying to besmirch her reputation, as if she has any. Sheila’s job is thankless because it abides by the Roy Cohn principle — accusing adversaries of being enemies of the state and refuse to present evidence. Roy Cohn was the counsel of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the renowned American witch hunter who was destroyed by lawyer Joseph Welch as he asked him why he is enamored with cruelty in going after “communists” in the US military. “Have you got any sense of decency?” Welch asked.
That question silenced McCarthy and Cohn. Roy Cohn groomed Donald Trump to spout anti-communist tropes when he was his client and trained him to invent stories and not deny his lies. Cohn rode on the anti-Red hysteria in convicting Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and executing them in 1963 on the basis of a single “confession” by a brother-in-law that the couple spied for Russia. KGB documents recently declassified showed that the spy ring in the Manhattan Project did not include the Rosenbergs but an entire Jewish family that the KGB repatriated to Russia after completing their work. The US committed a monumental error in executing the Rosenbergs and their two sons want the US government to admit its mistake and say sorry for the murderous injustice. Similar injustice should not visit the Sara impeachment trial because justice must be rendered in favor of taxpayers.
On the first day of the trial, minus the Punch and Judy show of the Cayetanos, the court ruled that 16 senators must convict Sara as the Constitution mandated, even the Senate, as a deliberative assembly must have 24 senators present to render judgment. Yet, three out of the 24 senators cannot participate in the trial, with Sens. Jinggoy Estrada and Rodante Marcoleta facing non-bailable plunder charges. Sen. Bato de la Rosa is on the run, presumably hiding in Cavite, Davao del Norte and Quezon City, since he lacks the courage to face the charge of crime against humanity before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. In the event the ICC also issues an arrest warrant against Sen. Bong Go, four senators would be unable to do their work as senator-judges. Is 16 the required number of senators to deliver a guilty verdict? The Supreme Court (SC) hasn’t said so, leaving the issue for the Senate to resolve.
There should be no fuss about the court’s decision to deny the prosecution plea for Sara to attend the trial and be arraigned, with Sison saying counsel represents her and the chamber can dispense with her presence, as it did. The issue is why is Sara so allergic to attending the trial just as she did not contemplate answering in depth the questions raised during the congressional hearings. How can the accused, a lawyer at that, rebut the charges by being absent during trial? By her own admission, Sara confirmed that she hates crowds, which explains why she needs 433 bodyguards to keep people away from her. This is strange. How can she genuinely touch base with Filipinos when she has agoraphobia?
Rep. Luistro made it abundantly clear that the prosecution will present at least 57 witnesses and mountains of evidence to back up its articles of impeachment. The prosecutors culled the evidence from official documents, bank records and papers that confirmed the bank accounts of the Dutertes, Sara’s husband Mans Carpio and the deposits by other people and withdrawals by the Dutertes. That the money may have been listed in “other” assets as defense lawyer Michael Poa said, or that the cash only “passed through,” did not erase the accountability of Sara as a beneficiary of laundered money. Such excuses cannot persuade anyone that Sara is lily-white and never touched a single centavo from public coffers.
If the so-called 18 “Marines” who “delivered” cash from flood control projects to lawmakers and Palace officials could change their statements, so too can Poa and Sara. When asked why Sara was giving him a huge amount of money monthly at the DepEd, Poa’s original reply was “I don’t know.” Later, he claimed the money was actually his reimbursements for materials that Sara wanted purchased. Compare this to Sara’s misuse of scores of millions of pesos for “informers” that she later justified as being paid to combat the grooming of pupils by New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas. It took months for the excuse to be broached, refined, and put in a kodigo but ultimately failed to convince anyone. But hope springs eternal for she who believes that god has commissioned her to be president of this underdeveloping country.
This early, the Sara trolls are making a grand of the legal fireworks lit by the defense. Frankly, they are only sparklers that can only generate light briefly, to be extinguished as logic and solid proof tear down the walls put up by the defense. The P612.5 million in confidential funds that disappeared, the bogus expenses for anti-communist seminars bankrolled by the Philippine Army (PA) and the local government units (LGUs) which Sara says were sponsored by DepEd, the death threats against Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his wife, as well as former Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez (in dark pre-dawn video yet), the millions paid for “safehouses” in Bonifacio Global City, and the big amount of money for given away to thousands of fictitious informers all militate against Sara. And then, there is Ramil Madriaga, whom Sara called “Sir” and greeted on his birthday, suddenly becoming a complete stranger. Denial has no probative value, and Sheila Sison knows it too well. #
