Senior Deputy Speaker and former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo recently shared to the public a little-known and discussed fact about President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.,which according to her proves that the latter "believes in justice and principle".
On Wednesday, Oct.12, Arroyo served as one of two guest speakers at the 29th conference of the Philippine Trial Judges League in Subic Bay Freeport.
During her speech, the Pampanga 2nd district congresswoman recalled the Senate impeachment trial of the late Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Renato Corona when Marcos was still a senator.
She said: “In the end, only three senators voted to acquit the then-chief justice....The third was Ferdinand Marcos, Jr."
"This, despite Justice Corona voting against the Marcos family in the cases before him," Arroyo noted.
"Thus," she concluded, "Our President is a man who believes in justice and principle, a man who will be supportive of the work that you do to provide justice to our citizens.”
She likewise qualified that the late chief Justice received his judicial vindication after the SC’s unanimous decision to grant his retirement benefits to Corona’s widow, ruling that while the Senate impeachment as a political process removed him from office, he was not judicially convicted of any crime.
Furthermore, Arroyo, also a former House Speaker. recalled the politically-motivated cases filed against her by supporters of her immediate successor to emphasize the vital role of trial judges as frontliners in the delivery of justice.
“I mentioned these big cases involving personalities at the highest levels. If injustices can be done at such high levels, what more at the lower levels, involving ordinary citizens.
"Who will protect them?.... As trial judges, your decisions are what will inspire our citizens to believe that the Philippine justice system works," she said.
Underscoring her continuing faith in the country’s justice system, she said that all the cases filed against her eventually failed “because so many in our judicial system are decent, fair-minded people who acted on the basis of actual evidence and their conscience, rather than giving way to blind, partisan zealousness".
The other guest speaker during the event was current SC Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo.