Impeach spectacle has perils

An impeachment proceeding has once again exposed a gaping divide between constitutional promise and political practice.

The 2012 trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, removed by the Senate for failing to fully disclose his assets, including millions in foreign currency deposits, offered a cautionary precedent.

Later court rulings, including a Sandiganbayan decision clearing his heirs of charges of unexplained wealth, suggested that political judgment outpaced the facts. Yet his removal stood and it was irreversible, since the damage had been done.

A parallel unfolds today before the House Committee on Justice in the proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte.

The committee has aired Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) reports detailing hundreds of flagged transactions and billions in monetary flows linked to her and her family.

The disclosures, while dramatic, rest on a debatable legal footing. Bank secrecy laws strictly limit such revelations. However, an impeachment proceeding provides an exception. Critics argue the House panel, unlike the Senate sitting as an impeachment court, lacks full authority to compel and publicize these details without clearer judicial safeguards.

The House proceeds aware of these boundaries, turning what should be a sober inquiry into something closer to a public condemnation.

No clear Supreme Court precedent has squarely ruled that House-phase Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) disclosures constitute a crime.

The Corona experience suggested agencies face low practical culpability if they can show good faith compliance with what they interpret as the impeachment exception.

If the Supreme Court later rules on a House overreach, such as through a petition for certiorari alleging grave abuse, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and AMLC officials could face civil, administrative and criminal liabilities. However, the latter remains a high bar requiring proof of willful violation.

Using the Corona trial as a precedent, the BSP and AMLC have a strong case, grounded in the constitutional impeachment exception and the agencies’ regulatory roles.

The political nature of an impeachment often renders a post hoc judicial exoneration of the target largely symbolic, since the damage occurs upfront.

The Vice President faces an uneven stage. She is expected to defend herself in a forum many view as premature or procedurally flawed, while the narrative of suspicion dominates the airwaves long before any Senate trial.

One-sided revelation risks becoming defamation dressed in official robes.

Fabricating or strategically leaking evidence to destroy a public figure is wicked, malicious and corrosive to democratic norms.

In Corona’s case, certifications which were contested and rushed disclosures contributed to a conviction that a judicial review later could not undo, since the Senate court was beyond the judiciary’s ambit, being a sui generis creature.

The same danger looms now as political theater substitutes for due process and later exoneration, if it arrives, proves largely futile once an official has been stained and sidelined.

Accountability should have the smallest tinge of vendetta. When selective disclosure precedes full adjudication and when the House’s investigative procedure is colored by partisan punishment, it undermines the very integrity it claims to uphold.

The public is conscious not only of verdicts but also of the methods used to reach them.

Those desperate methods, when tainted, erode public trust in the perpetrators.