MANILA — Chief Justice Renato C. Corona has asked the Senate for the outright dismissal of the impeachment complaint filed against him by the House of Representatives.
In his answer to the impeachment charges, Corona asked for the outright dismissal of the “Verified Impeachment Complaint,” for failing to meet the requirements of the Constitution or that the Impeachment Court enter a judgment of acquittal for all the Articles of Impeachment.
Corona said the impeachment came like a thief in the night and in blitzkrieg fashion. He noted that almost instantly, some members of the House resigned from the majority coalition, amidst complaints of undue haste in the filing of the Articles of Impeachment.
Corona said the nation remains in a state of bewilderment, stunned to see that the members of the House were able to come together on such short notice, to decisively act on a matter that they had no knowledge of the week before.
“While the swift impeachment action of the House of Representative is nothing short of miraculous, it also has the distinction of being the single most destructive legislative act heretofore seen,” he said.
Corona said it appears that the filing of the impeachment complaint was the handiwork of the Liberal Party. “Without much effort, one reaches the inevitable conclusion that President Benigno Aquino III as, the head of the Liberal Party, must have been “in” on the plan from inception,” he said.
Corona said the complaint was born out of the bias against him and the predisposition to destroy him by associating him with the unpopular former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and by misinterpreting his concurrence to certain Supreme Court decisions as protecting Arroyo.
“The impeachment process, while admittedly political in character, has therefore become a partisan orgy, devoid of any mature deliberation and of lawful purpose whatsoever, especially in a precedent-setting and historic event involving no less than the impeachment of the Chief Justice of the Philippines,” he said.
