Sen. Ralph Recto thought the viewing and listening public, no matter how small an audience it really is, that it wouldn’t see through what he was doing, which was doing a Drilon, i.e., lawyering for the prosecution Wednesday.
Sure, he can always claim that all he did by questioning the witness, Bureau of Internal Revenue Chief Kim Henares, was merely to clarify the public what it was the “Alpha” returns and the Income Tax Returns (ITRs) were all about, but he went further, and asked, year by year, what was the income of Chief Justice Corona and the amount of taxes paid under the Alpha list. He can always claim that as an excuse.
But — and this is a big but. There was already a ruling made by the presiding judge of the impeachment court, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, disallowing the witness to be questioned by the prosecutor, except to authenticate the documents, to which the defense had already not only stipulated, but also was in full accord — to shorten the authentication process, which merely needed the witness to state that yes, such is true and correct, because she did not have personal knowledge and that she was moreover not competent to give an opinion on the matter related to the CJ’s ITR because she was not an expert witness.
Why the ITRs of the Chief Justice and even the statement of assets and liabilities networth SALns from the 1990s to 2010 are being brought up is puzzling, since it is the CJ who is being tried in an impeachment trial as CJ, and not as an associate justice or even a chief of staff. Corona was appointed CJ in May 2010. This means that the ITR, or even the Alpha list tax scheme where the employees withholding tax is at the source, is not material to the case, since even the 2010 tax payment is really based on the 2009 income of the CJ.
But Recto played dirty. What Recto did was to go against the ruling of the chair, which nobody objected to. This was not only a clear disrespect of the chair’s ruling, but also foul play on the part of Recto, because he already knew that the private prosecutor was disallowed from asking the witness questions outside of what was already ruled upon, yet he, being a senator-judge and knowing that neither the presiding officer nor the defense, could object to whatever Recto does — despite his foul trick, to ensure that the prosecution gets what it wants — through his claimed “clarification” which was no clarification but in aid of getting information out--for publicity purposes--that the prosecution failed to elicit from the witness.
Recto can hardly be considered stupid and while he may not be a lawyer, even a nincompoop following the trial would have been aware of the fact that Enrile had already ruled against the prosecution on such a matter, and this too, with another senator-judge emphatically stressing the non-necessity of the witness testifying.
Recto knew all this. He was aware of Enrile’s ruling to disallow Henares to testify the way the prosecutor wanted her to, Miriam Santiago’s taking to the floor and already stating that there was nothing for Henares to testify to.
But there went Noynoy’s senator-judge ally, Recto, who did what the presiding officer ruled against, and did for the prosecution what the prosecution was not allowed to do, knowing too that his “clients” in the prosecution panel, as well as the yellow media, would feast on what was publicly disclosed, even when nothing was proved by way of the documents.
Now that is certainly unbecoming and very unfair of a claimed impartial senator-judge, who moreover took an oath of impartiality.
As Recto opened up that avenue for the prosecution, which was disallowed, the private prosecutor went on to ask the same questions to Henares on the other matters — including the real estate tax paid by Corona’s wife for a property.
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