ROUND 1 of the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona is over, and it goes to the defense, writes columnist Solita Monsod.  And it goes to the defense, I might add, without the defense doing much about it.  In other words, they won the round largely because the prosecution bungled it  and they bungled it in spectacular style, with all the world watching it live on TV.

To continue with Mrs. Monsod’s appropriate boxing analogy, now we have a minute before Round 2 begins.  What do we do?  First let’s spend the first 30 seconds analyzing what went wrong.

Strategy was wrong

Like the “constitutionally infirm” Article 2, which violated legal norms by lumping together three charges in one article of impeachment, the prosecution’s strategy suffered a fatal flaw by seeking to try the case in Plaza Miranda, a metaphor for the political madding  crowd.

Hence, the prosecutors chose to start with Article 2 because it offered, to use the garish American colloquial,  “more bang for the buck.”  This is also the reason they lumped together three alleged crimes in one article, in violation of House impeachment rules.

The problem with Article 2, aside from being a shotgun charge, is that  while it made for presumably a more crowd-pleasing opening salvo  it is also the hardest to prove.  By alleging a host of criminal acts  albeit “reported” and “suspected” only  the prosecution set a standard of proof bordering on “proof beyond reasonable doubt,” the quantum of proof required to attain a conviction for criminal cases.

Unwittingly, the prosecution became a victim of its own bipolar strategy trying the case in Plaza Miranda and not in the Senate.  The senators remained unimpressed.  Not only that, they got sick and tired of the bungling attempts of the prosecution to litigate the case in Plaza Miranda.

‘Brotherly advice’

At one point, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III, his heart bleeding for his fellow lawyers in the prosecution, offered “brotherly advice” for them to abandon their efforts in attempting to prove wrongdoing in the “discounts” the Chief Justice got for his purchase of a “water-damaged” condominium unit.

The pettiness of the prosecution line prompted Senators Chiz Escudero and Joker Arroyo to seek a definition of “impeachable crimes.”  Senator Escudero reduced the argument to absurd levels when he asked if an impeachable officer could be impeached for jaywalking.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile posed the question succinctly, “What is a high crime?”

And so the first three weeks (11 days) of trial ended with the prosecution failing to prove its case both in the Senate and in Plaza Miranda.  This is a usual problem with a two-pronged strategy: you normally fail to prove both prongs.

Taken for a ride

Worse, before the third week of trial ended, the senators and the media took the prosecution spokespersons to task for leaking to the press 45 alleged Corona properties which they later denied as having come from them.

“Let us not lie,” Senate President Pro Tempore Jinggoy Estrada told Chief House Prosecutor Rep. Niel Tupas to his face.  “I just saw ANC replaying the taped footage (of the prosecution press conference ) on TV.”

Tupas insisted the number 45 did not come from them but from the Land Registration Authority.  Reporters covering the trial also accosted Chief House spokesperson Rep. Romero Quimbo for misleading them.

With the media now turning against them, it seems problematic how the prosecutors can still use them to address the Plaza Miranda crowd.

Water under the bridge

But all this is water under the bridge.  Round 2 begins on Monday.  And it’s going to be Article 3, which might prove even more difficult to prove.  But let us see before we judge.

The bigger question now is, Can the prosecution still recover from the mauling they got in Round 1.  They might, if they get their strategy sorted out.

First, they should replace Tupas with a veteran trial lawyer in their team, Rep. Rudy Farinas.  The shift to Article 3 gives them a face-saving moment to get Tupas out of the way.

Second, they should litigate this case before the senator-judges, not in Plaza Miranda.  The senators are not awed by the conventional wisdom that the public is out to hang Corona.  There is no survey to prove this to be true.  If at all, the public does not understand the impeachment trial and they are too busy eking out a living to even care.

‘Power struggle’

Addressing a summit of the poorest sectors of our society recently, Christian S. Monsod, a member of the Constitutional Commission that wrote our basic law, flatly stated: “The impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona amid the broadened debate on constitutional issues are not going to bring out masses of the poor to take sides.  To them the turmoil is a power struggle within the leadership class, and it distracts from the central issue in our society: poverty and gross inequalities.”

If the opinion surveys are any guide at all, the people’s major concerns are still grinding poverty, jobs, and how to feed their families.

The sad part of the impeachment trial is that the people fail to see how this will solve their gut problems.  And it is not even providing them good entertainment to get their minds off the gnawing feeling that grinds in their empty stomachs.