Diskettes or DVDs? Enrile, Cuevas confused by tech terms

The most senior lawyers in the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona seem to be having a hard time with technological terms.

 

During the continuation of Corona’s trial on Tuesday, lead defense counsel Serafin Cuevas and presiding officer, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, repeatedly referred to digital video disks (DVDs) as “diskettes.”

 

“We have not seen the diskettes,” Cuevas said during the trial, referring to DVDs from ABS-CBN being presented as evidence by the prosecution. On Monday, Cuevas was criticized by many trial observers for supposedly humiliating an ABS-CBN cameraman for asking questions of law. 

 

Enrile also at one point instructed the prosecution to “show the diskette” to the defense camp.

 

The prosecution presented DVDs on news events — including Supreme Court spokesperson Midas Marquez’s announcement of the issuance of a temporary restraining order (TRO) favoring former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo — to support the panel’s allegation against Corona under Article VII of the impeachment complaint.

 

Article VII of the impeachment complaint accuses Corona of betraying public trust through his "partiality in granting a TRO in favor of former President Arroyo and her husband Mike in order to give them an opportunity to escape prosecution and to frustrate the ends of justice, and in distorting the Supreme Court decision on th eeffectivity of the TRO in view of a clear failure to comply with the conditions of the SC's own TRO." 

 

Later on during the trial when Cuevas was challenging the competence of ABS-CBN video library head Rochelle Mendez to testify in the Senate proceedings, Enrile once again got his technological terms mixed up.

 

“The video is the best proof of the truthfulness of the contents. The real evidence is the diskettes themselves,” he said.

 

The Senate President also repeatedly asked Mendez during the trial to explain the purpose of DVDs and compact flash (CF) cards in video recording. — RSJ/HS, GMA News