Corona illuminates

The cyber libel hysteria is inextricably tied to the yellow manipulation and abuse of the late Chief Justice Renato Corona who suffered unprecedented demonization from former President Noynoy Aquino and his cohorts.

The offending 2012 news article in the cyber libel case had an obvious malicious spin, which reported Corona’s use of a vehicle owned by a controversial businessman who was supposedly “under surveillance by the National Security Council for alleged involvement in illegal activities, namely, ‘human trafficking and drug smuggling.’”

The report was obviously part of the yellow blitz to turn public opinion against the impeached Supreme Court head who was then being tried by the Senate court.

Corona was ousted, but businessman Willy Keng who was caught in the yellow black-ops wanted to set things right and requested online news outfit Rappler to remove the article.

The article, however, remained online and was even updated on 19 February 2014.

The controversy has to be seen in the context of the impeachment trial where public funds were shamelessly farmed out to assure what Noynoy wanted, which was the removal of Corona, was followed.

“Incentives” were given to the senator-judges to clinch Corona’s conviction in the impeachment trial, money that was later found to have been sourced from the unconstitutional Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

There was more, as Noynoy freely used public money as leverage in the oust-Corona effort.

On 12 February 2012, a Sunday, defense lawyers of Corona startled the nation with a hasty press briefing to bare efforts of the Palace to bribe senator-judges with P100 million each supposedly to defy a Supreme Court (SC) injunction on disclosing Corona’s dollar accounts.

The baring of the foreign currency deposits of Corona was then the subject of debates at the Senate impeachment on whether or not the court’s move would constitute violation of the bank secrecy law on dollar accounts.

The lawyers cited an unnamed source pointing to Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. as negotiator for the Palace.

Many dismissed the revelations as part of the defense strategy, but Corona lawyer Jose Roy III insisted that the Palace plot existed and the defense panel’s anonymous source was “very reliable.”

Roy said the money that will be used to bribe the senators will “come from savings and can be used for soft projects” which was apparently the DAP funds.

The money was aside from the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) since senators were entitled to P100 million a year for soft projects and another P100 million for hard projects under the pork barrel scheme.

The PDAF then was still part of the budget but was declared unconstitutional in a landmark 2013 decision of the SC or a year after Noynoy yanked out Corona.

The Palace and the Department of Budget and Management were forced to admit to the use of the DAP during the impeachment trial, but it issued an excuse that the timing was coincidental since it claimed legislators were intended to be tapped to spur government spendings through the DAP.

A deeper context in the current international media sensation would have to delve into the role of the yellow media, paid bloggers and other hacks used in the scandalously-funded desire of Noynoy and the yellow mob to bump off Corona from office and install a lackey which later turned out to be the bogus chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.

Foreign media, of course, which take anything anti-Duterte as gospel truth, were gullible and some even willing victims of the spins that blame the “autocratic” regime of “suppressing” freedom of speech and of the press which is a far-out assessment.

The real victim was the target of the yellow blitzkrieg in 2012 who was an SC head and who just happened to be personally detested by Noynoy.

The irony is that the victimized collateral damage who merely wanted fair treatment is now pilloried as a tool of media oppression.