At the height of martial rule in 1973 when the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos had a firm grip on nearly all government institutions, Renato Corona was a student at the Ateneo de Manila University Law School. That same year, the Supreme Court legitimized the 1973 Constitution that virtually sanctioned Marcos’ one-man rule.
Chief Justice Renato Corana is sworn into office by President Arroyo on May 17. Will Corona also swear in the presumptive president-elect Noynoy Aquino? Avito Dalan file photo
Supreme Court under the Marcos regime was not deemed to be an independent bulwark of democracy. The magistrates approved edicts that extended martial law beyond 1976, and other decrees that curtailed democracy. More than 30 years later, critics of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration liken today’s Supreme Court to the subservient high court in the Marcos era. When today’s court allowed President Arroyo to name a new chief justice – despite a perceived appointments ban imposed by the 1987 Constitution – former Commission on Elections chair Christian Monsod said the high tribunal was reminiscent of the Supreme Court that accommodated the whims of a chief executive. “I was disappointed. I said, ‘This looks like a Marcos court, and now it’s an Arroyo court.’ They seem to be especially accommodating the wishes of the president. [Its] reputation and image have suffered a great deal," said Monsod, one of the framers of the 1987 Constitution. Monsod added that when he and his colleagues crafted the Constitution, the appointments ban was a blanket restriction designed to prevent incumbent presidents from making last-minute moves to cling onto power. Despite protests by legal luminaries and civic groups, President Arroyo went on to appoint the next chief magistrate. On May 17, she administered Corona’s oath taking as the 23rd chief justice, succeeding Reynato Puno who retired that day. In his speech shortly after taking his oath of office, Corona said, “By and with God's awesome grace, I shall prove myself worthy of the responsibilities entrusted to me by our people of whatever color of persuasion and nature of belief." What is it about Corona that make pundits wary of his appointment as chief justice? Why do critics argue that the Supreme Court’s independence is at stake with Corona at its helm?
’Crowning Glory’ Renato Corona was born on Oct. 15, 1948. He studied at the Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) throughout his academic life, earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1970. It was during his college years when he met Antonio Carpio, who would later be his fellow Supreme Court justice and contender for the chief justice post. Corona and Carpio both served as editors-in-chief of the ADMU school paper “The Guidon." After college, both went to different law schools: Corona at the Ateneo School of Law, Carpio at the state-run University of the Philippines. Corona later finished his Master of Laws at the Harvard Law School in the US in 1982. He then worked with the tax counseling group of high-profile accounting firm Sycip Gorres and Velayo (SGV). On the other hand, Carpio went into private practice and founded one of the country’s most prominent law firms with Pancho Villaraza and Avelino Cruz. In 1992, he served as chief legal counsel of newly-elected President Fidel Ramos. In her book “Shadow of Doubt," journalist Marites Vitug wrote that it was through Carpio that Corona entered the government. "When Ramos won, he took Carpio in as his legal counsel. It was then that Corona wrote Carpio, saying he wanted to join government.... Carpio readily took in Corona to head the Malacañang legal office. While there, the two worked to declog the office of a 20-year backlog of pending administrative cases," Vitug wrote in her book. Carpio later resigned from the Ramos administration at the height of calls from his camp to amend the 1987 Constitution to accommodate term extensions. With Carpio out, Corona took over as Ramos’ chief legal counsel. When Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo won as president and vice president, respectively, in 1998, both Carpio and Corona worked with the vice president’s office. Carpio was Mrs. Arroyo’s chief legal counsel. At the height of the triumphant anti-Estrada street uprising in January 2001, it was Carpio who drafted Mrs. Arroyo’s letter to the Supreme Court expressing her intent to take over the presidency. In January 20, 2001, then Chief Justice Hilario Davide swore in Mrs. Arroyo as the 14th Philippine president. Nine months later, in October 2001, Mrs. Arroyo named Carpio as associate justice – her first appointee to the high tribunal. Corona, on the other hand, was President Arroyo’s chief of staff and spokesperson until April 2002, when his boss appointed him to the Supreme Court. Despite their strong ties that dated back to Mrs. Arroyo’s vice presidency, Carpio turned his back on Malacañang’s graces in 2005 when the President was accused of cheating in the 2004 elections. A check on past Supreme Court rulings on controversial cases that had serious implications for the Arroyo administration would show that Corona usually voted in favor of the administration while Carpio voted against it.
Despite this, Corona stressed in media interviews that he is his own man, that his relationship with President Arroyo was never personal. "Everything I say now will be just words. You have to wait. You have to watch me," he told his critics. Lashing at those who only zero in on his decisions that favored the administration, Corona insisted that of the 900 decisions and resolutions he penned as associate justice, several went against the government. "It’s not true that I always voted in favor of the government," he said in Filipino in a television interview, adding that he had issued writs of amparo to supposed human rights victims of the administration. The writ of amparo, Spanish word for protection, was conceived to solve the extensive extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances. It was approved by the Supreme Court in September 2007. The writ is a remedy available to any person whose right to life, liberty and security is violated or threatened with violation by an unlawful act or omission of a public official or employee, or of a private individual or entity.
An Arroyo court In the first week of January 2010, Quezon City Rep. Matias Defensor urged the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC), of which he is a member, to open nominations for Puno’s replacement. The JBC is the body that screens and vets nominees for vacant judicial posts. Defensor, a fierce Arroyo ally, argued there should never be a vacuum in the chief justice post. Legal experts and civic groups clamored to reject the idea of filling such a crucial government post during an election ban. They warned that President Arroyo would appoint a close ally as chief magistrate to help protect her from prosecution beyond her term which ends on June 30. Section 15 Article VII of the 1987 Constitution prohibits the incumbent president from making appointments two months before an election and before his or her term expires. Applied this year, the election ban started on March 10 and should last until June 30. Puno hung up his robes on May 17, or seven days after the May 10 polls, the first time a chief justice retired within the time frame prescribed by Section 15, Article VII. "I am sorry that my birthday has been causing you some problem," Puno joked at his retirement ceremony last Friday. “If it is of any help, I am willing to file a petition for habeas data to change the date of my birthday but I know that is the wrong remedy." But last March, the high tribunal ruled that appointments to the Supreme Court are exempt from the ban and ordered the JBC to submit a list of possible appointees to succeed Puno. At first there were six nominees: Associate Justices Carpio, Corona, Teresita Leonardo-De Castro, Arturo Brion, Conchita Carpio-Morales, and Acting Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Edilberto Sandoval. But Carpio and Carpio-Morales begged off, saying they would accept the nomination if the next President would make the appointment. On the morning of May 12, with the nation still reeling from the vagaries of the country’s first nationwide automated polls on May 10, Malacañang announced that President Arroyo had appointed Corona as Puno’s successor. The presumptive president-elect Noynoy Aquino was in a defiant mood and suggested that he would not take his oath before the new chief justice. “In all probability, I am waiting for my lawyers’ opinion, but it will probably be before the barangay captain of Tarlac," said Aquino, a resident of Barangay Central in Tarlac City’s San Miguel district. Five days later, Corona was sworn into office by President Arroyo and took over the helm of the Supreme Court. Corona was just as defiant. “Undaunted by man or circumstance, and unswayed by praise or criticism, in me right will find a sanctuary and wrong will find no refuge.
Fiat justitia coelum ruat. Let justice be done though the heavens fall, even if this should require my turning back the tide," he said in his speech. In succeeding media interviews, Corona vowed to stay independent of the appointing authority and asked the public to judge him by his actions. Should Mrs. Arroyo be prosecuted for the slew of corruption and cheating allegations that marred her nine-year rule, the public will know whether Corona is true to his words.
– VS/HS, GMANews.TV 
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