Quick Lines

SENATE PRESIDENT Juan Ponce Enrile and House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte make it clear that the amendment they are working at doing in the Philippine Constitution will not be doing away with the 40/60 ownership ratio that must be guaranteed for ownership of properties by foreign entities in the country in order to make the law of the land "flexible" to changing business environment. The First Amendment will involve making it possible for the Congress to change the ratio when "warranted." Just what conditions that warrants increasing the foreign ownership ratio in order to be flexible? This opening can end up giving foreigners 90/10 over Philippine properties.

Certain respected lawyers said that in the interest of check and balance in the government, there is no absolute supremacy of one branch of government. And they seem to say--  except for the Supreme Court.

The Impeachment Court subpoenas only the year-end balance of the Corona accounts in the banks. The defense acted as if all the transactions in these accounts will be scrutinized in public. Are the defense counsels voluntering to blow things out of proportion?

Chief Justice Renato Corona said in one of his speeches before his subordinates in the high court that he is not the Supreme Court; that's because the high court decides cases as a group (en banc). Then lately he said that he is a stumbling block to those who do not want the Hacienda Luisita distributed to the farmers. He is saying now that he is the Supreme Court. [Only the Supreme Court deciding banc can be that stumbling block.]

Head of the CJ Corona defense team, Serafin Cuevas, admitted in Philippine Daily Inquirer that “If only they (senator-judges) let the prosecution ask questions, those documents (SALNs) would not have been disclosed." This is tantamount to an admission that the Corona defense refused to hand to the Impeachment Court that SALNs, and had to be forced by the Court to make that happen. So much the truthful in lawyering.