WITH her blood pressure rising to dangerous levels, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago demanded that the House prosecutors in the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona speed things up by submitting a list of witnesses they will present.

Rep. Niel Tupas, chief prosecutor, said he had to consult with the other prosecutors.  Whereupon Senator Santiago’s blood pressure shot up higher.  “You shoud know!” she screamed at Tupas.  “Don’t you have a trial brief?”

A trial brief is not a piece of undergarment but a document lawyers prepare detailing the witnesses they intend to call and evidence they plan to submit at the trial.  It makes the trial better organized and speedy.


Mercury rising

The exchange between Santiago and Tupas happened on the day the House prosecutors were also publicly scolded for lumping together several charges in one article of impeachment, a violation of their own impeachment rules. 

Rather than further delay the trial by sending the impeachment complaint back to the House for amendment, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile thought it would be speedier just to fix the faulty article. He called an executive session of the senator-judges to fix the House prosecutors’ lapses.

“I’m sad to say that there was fault in the crafting of the pleading,” Enrile said in explaining the impeachment court’s action.  “And that is why we had to correct it in a caucus.”

In gratitude, Tupas asked Enrile to be “more liberal” in conducting the trial.  “Tell me how much more you want me to be liberal,” Enrile told off Tupas.


Cheaper by the dozen

In response to Senator Santiago’s demand that they get more organized to avoid wasting time, Tupas submitted over the weekend a list of 100 witnesses, including Supreme Court justices, media reporters, and doctors.

Informed of the number of witnesses for the prosecution, Senator Enrile exclaimed, “Oh, my God!”  He stressed that “unnecessary delays will not be tolerated,” a newspaper reported. In Monday’s hearing, Enrile suggested that the prosecutors and defense meet and agree on their witnesses.

Majority Foor Leader Vicente Sotto III, who controls the flow of the trial from the floor, told a newspaper reporter curtly in a phone interview:  “I wonder who’s delaying the impeachment trial now.”

Defense lawyer and spokesperson Tranquil Salvador III said the trial was “not about numbers but the quality and substance of the witnesses’ testimony.”

Senator Santiago just laughed: “Witnesses are weighed, not numbered.”


‘Cause for concern’

Sen. Francis Pangilinan said the long list of witnesses was a “cause for concern.”  He said, “if (the prosecutors) are serious about presenting all these witnesses, then we face the prospects of a prolonged trial.”

The Corona defense panel said they would present only 15 witnesses.

On top of the 100 witnesses, Tupas said the prosecutors planned to present 300 pieces of documentary evidence.

Rep. Lorenzo Tanada III, a House prosecution spokesperson, said, “People might say that having too many witnesses would bog down the trial further, but we don’t intend to put all the witnesses in the stand.”

So what was the list for?


‘Senate should work’

To add insult to injury, another prosecution spokesperson, Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara, said, “We are willing to work.  If the Senate says we will work, we will work.  It’s their call.”

Angara was referring to suggestions that the senators should work during the scheduled congressional break to speed up the trial.

Sen. Ralph Recto, an economist, said, “There are so many things that the government has to do.  That will affect the Senate’s ability to legislate.  Maybe they can trim their list.”

Sen. Joker Arroyo said, “The cat is out of the bag.  Does the prosecution need 100 witnesses to be able to remove the Chief Justice from office?  At the rate the trial is proceeding, we can’t be finished till the end of 2012.”

“The trial is hampered... because of the articles of impeachment transmitted to the Senate, which were wantonly prepared and the root cause of all the arguments,” Arroyo said.


Mob rule

The concept of “tyranny of numbers” traces its roots to ancient Greece, which used the word ochlocracy (“mob rule”) to describe a rampaging, unreasoning majority imposing its tyrannical will over a minority.

The author David Boyle has written a book using the phrase for its title, adding a biting subtitle, “Why counting can’t make us happy.”

Boyle tells the story of the 18th-century prodigy Jedediah Buxton in his first trip to the theater to watch a performance of Richard III.  Asked whether he had enjoyed it, Buxton replied that the dances had taken 5,202 steps to complete and that the actors had uttered 12,445 words.

Boyle says in dismay: “Nothing about what the words said, about the winter of our discontent made glorious summer; nothing about the evil hunchback king.”  He continues:

“Buxton is in some ways a fearsome symbol of the modern age, in which we count everything but see the significance of nothing.

“...we encounter such ‘calculating’ man-machines almost every day: the  academic who refuses to pass judgment on any problem, no matter how urgent, because there hasn’t been enough research; the politician who is so obsessed with opinion polls he no longer trusts his gut instincts...”


Lost in translation

Asserting that “the more we count, the less we understand,” Boyle goes on to tell another story we can all understand: “When Pepsi had its slogan ‘Come alive with the Pepsi generation’ translated into Chinese, it was understood as ‘Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.’”

“We have reached a point where measuring things doesn’t work anymore.  It is a counting crisis, born out of using numbers to distill the sheer complexity of life into something manageable.”

Boyle concludes: “The closer you get to measuring what’s important, the more it escapes you.  Because number-crunching brings a kind of blindness with it.”