WAS it a senator-judge or a defense counsel in the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona who, in what seemed a half-cooked bid to sound philosophical, said the CJ could have committed only honest mistakes in computing some amounts in his statement of assets, liabilities, and net worth?

In Article 2 of the impeachment complaint, Corona’s SALN has been the bone of contention at the Impeachment Court. Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile presiding sui generis over litigation of whether to remove or retain the Chief Justice as primus inter pares in the Judiciary.

Stressing that impeachment is sui generis, a class of its own, in which the Constitution allowed even non-lawyers to decide impeachment cases, Inquirer columnist former Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban elaborated:

“As I wrote on Jan. 8, an impeachment is sui generis: it is unique and is not comparable to any other proceeding. Since the Senate was granted the sole power to decide impeachments, it stands to reason that Charter also gave the senators the sole discretion to choose whatever standard they deem proper.”

AVP disclosed that the United States Senate, whose concept of impeachment our Senate has adopted, “does not ape judicial processes; thus, the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton did not even undergo the tedious hearings now being conducted here.” Touche.

“Former Associate Justice Serafin Cuevas, lead counsel of Corona, and smokin’ feisty Senator-Judge Miriam Defensor-Santiago, a former trial court judge, should cordially say hello to former Chief Justice Artemio V. Panaganiban,” interjects resident kibitzer Jose in this corner. It took a lot of time to refrain from telling him that in Merriam-Webster’s view, kibizer is one who looks at what’s going on and gives unwanted advice.

Anyway, the latest from the “tedious hearings” we’ve had to endure is about the impeachment prosecutors’ shamefully scoring 25 out of the 45 properties that Corona allegedly failed to report or excluded or kept hidden from his SALN.

So have the prosecution and defense been at loggerheads over discrepancies between the CJ’s SALN and Income Tax Return figures, on top of apparent conflicts in property acquisition casts and corresponding amounts posted in his SALN from 2002 to 2010.

It was at the point when the hearings dwelt on Corona’s acquired properties that Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares revealed a BIR probe showing Corona “failed to include nine properties in documents since he become associate justice in 2002.”

Nine “honest mistakes” in as many years that, for all the apparent predilection to be imprecise tantamount to malicious inexactitude would not constitute SALN falsification?

The Chief Justice “reported an P8.3-million net worth where 25 (it should have been 31.224 million in 2006). Supposed net worth was P24 million but he reported only P11 million,” Henares said. Based on the BIR chief’s testimony (Inquirer, Feb. 7) the CJ’s unreported 2003 to 2009 net worth, incredible as it may seem, totaled roughly P122 million.

Defense lead counsel Cuevas moved to strike out Henares’ testimony on all those ponts” because the Chief Justice “is not being impeached for false declaration.” Besides, Cuevas added that “the articles of impeachment show nothing there to predicate this kind of evidence.” For her part, Ms. Karen Jimeno, one of the two defense panel spokespersons, said it would be “premature to determine supposed errors in Corona’s SALNs and ITRs.”

Even tampered and impartial to the proverbial last two minutes of the impeachment hearings for the day, sui generis case presiding Senator-Judge Juan Ponce Enrile softly put it to closure: “You can traverse that in your evidence, anyway. Let it be.”