CONVENORS of the Movement 188 believe that the uncovered bank deposits of Chief Justice Renato Corona would serve as the “smoking gun” to convince the public that he is not morally fit to remain in office.

The Movement 188, composed of lawmakers who signed the impeachment complaint against Corona, is convincing the senator-judges to convict the Chief Justice because he obviously falsified his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Networth (SALN).

In the previous hearings, officials of the Philippine Savings Bank and Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) admitted that Corona owned several peso accounts amounting to almost P32 million.

Meanwhile, the opening of the alleged dollar accounts were on hold because of the temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by the High Tribunal.

Movement 188 expressed hopes that the senator-jurors would judge the impeached magistrate by the stringent standards of honesty and integrity that the Supreme Court, on Corona’s watch, have imposed on public servants, when it upheld last year the Office of the Ombudsman’s dismissal from the service of a Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) officer for not baring his bank deposits in his SALNs.

This House of Representatives bloc also bewailed the failure of Corona “to come clean” on this issue in asking the SC to virtually kill the Senate trial.

“His (Corona) rearguard action to put a stop to the Senate trial betrays an apparently nefarious and immoral effort to stop senator-jurors from unraveling peso and dollar deposits that he had kept off his annual SALNs and, worse, are grossly disproportionate to his and his wife’s declared incomes combined,” the Movement 188 said.

The group added that there is no need to go any farther for guidance on whether the falsification of SALNs is a crime worthy enough of the Chief Justice’s conviction, if only on the Article 2.2 charge that he had not truthfully disclosed his SALNs and the Article 2.3 charge that he had not included a number of his assets in these SALN reports that he had submitted to the Supreme Court under oath.