WANTING to save the Senate, sitting as impeachment court, from future “technical objections,” Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago yesterday asked fellow senator-judges to reconsider their recent order granting the request of the House prosecution panel to subpoena the bank records of impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Santiago made the move after Senator-Judge Francis Escudero maintained that only a senator-judge can file such a motion. Escudero made the remark after Corona’s lead defense counsel, retired Justice Serafin Cuevas filed a “verbal” motion for reconsideration of the impeachment court’s order to subpoena Corona’s bank records at the Philippine Savings Bank (PS Bank) and Bank of Philippine Islands (BPI).

She disagreed with Escudero’s view. “There is no such requirement in the impeachment rules.  Perhaps what he referred to was the Senate rules, which can apply as a supplemental reference, but only if it is relevant to the impeachment,” Santiago said.

She is filing her own motion for reconsideration, in order to avoid any technical objections.

“My motion is superfluous, but might be necessary to avoid objections that could cause further trial delay,” she said. Santiago said that she was filing the motion under the principle of ex abundanti cautela, which means “from an abundance of care.”

“In other words, my motion is merely precautionary, because in my view the motion can be filed even only by defense counsel, and does not need to be filed by a senator-judge,” she said.

She stressed that her motion for reconsideration will not prejudice her final vote, because she is “only giving the defense a second chance to argue against the bank subpoenas.”

The senator-judges ordered the manager of the PS Bank to testify and produce tomorrow the bank record of Corona relative to his winning of P1 million during the bank’s March 2008 monthly raffle promotion as well as the chief magistrate’s monthly bank statements covering his peso or dollar accounts, including that of his wife, Cristina.

The impeachment court also required the concerned officials of the BPI to testify and produce the original account opening form, monthly bank statements of Corona from January 2005 up to December 2010.

Santiago said that the Senate rules on a motion for reconsideration filed by a senator refers only to the lawmaking function, and not to the impeachment function, of the Senate.

She believes that the impeachment court must reconsider its order because the issuance of the subpoena to the bank managers of PS Bank and BPI would violate its own ruling that evidence should not be allowed on ill-gotten wealth aspect of the impeachment complaint against Corona.