Editorial – Another front

IT is said that there are two trials going on against Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona. The first goes on in the Senate impeachment court where the niceties of the law and the rules of court are supposed to be observed. The second one is waged outside the Senate and it is called trial by publicity where there seems to be no rules at all.
The testimonies being revealed in the Senate anf the final verdict of the senator-judges could be devastating to his person and his future, as Chief Justice Corona said. The trial by publicity which has not stopped even after the Senate trial had started will continue to demonize the Chief Justice and members of his family long after judgment shall have been rendered  in the impeachment trial.
Now, in the middle of the two “trials,” comes the damning report of the World Bank on the questionable handling by the Supreme Court under Coloma of the Judicial Reform Support Project (JRSP) involving a World Bank loan of $21.9 million to the Supreme Court.
In a report dated Dec. 28, 2011, the World Bank asks a refund of $199,900 spent in some 70 “ineligible expenditures.”
The JRSP loan mess is not just a sideshow in the impeachment telenovela. It is an entirely different episode in the travails of Renato Corona as Chief Justice. This is not a matter where the Supreme Court can invoke its financial independence. Indeed, Mr. Corona, and his staunchest defender, Court Administrator Midas Marquez, owe the Filipino people a lot of explanation, since this involves a loan that all Filipinos are bound to pay as taxpayers.