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Palace: SC TRO on Corona $ accounts a ‘brazen effort to derail proceedings’


The Supreme Court decision to bar the Senate impeachment court from scrutinizing the dollar accounts of Chief Justice Renato Corona is “a brazen effort to derail the proceedings,” Malacañang said Thursday.   The temporary restraining order on Corona’s foreign currency accounts “is a defining moment for the Senate,” Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said in a statement. Supreme Court spokesperson Jose Midas Marquez told reporters in a briefing that the high tribunal  voted 8-5 to stop the Senate impeachment court from revealing the details of Corona's foreign currency deposit accouts.   “The burden of history must be weighing heavily on the shoulders of the Senate. But it can look back to its history as the defender of the people’s liberty, and the enemy of autocracy to know where its duty lies,” the Palace official noted.   The Aquino administration maintained that the Senate as an impeachment court is the proper procedure for resolving questions of integrity and fitness for office.   “The framers of our Constitution clearly intended the Senate to be the sole authority in all matters related to an impeachment trial. The provisions of our Constitution clearly say so,” Lacierda said.   A sober reading of the Constitution would clearly show that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over the Senate in impeachment trials.   “But from the very start, the Chief Justice, his lawyers, and defenders, have threatened to provoke a constitutional crisis: now, they have thrown down the gauntlet,” he said.   “While the supporters of the Chief Justice clearly lacked the numbers to go even further and try to stop the proceedings, the TRO handed down by the Court is a brazen effort to derail the proceedings,” Lacierda added.   In trying to prove that Corona was not forthright in declaring his statement of assets networth and liabilities, the House prosecution panel, headed by Iloilo Rep. Neil Tupas, is accusing the chief justice of maintaining dollar accounts in PSBank with a balance of at least $700,000 or roughly P30 million. — VS, GMA News

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