“LOUIS XIV SYNDROME”
by Juan L. Mercado

Impeached Supreme Court chief justice Renato Corona skewered President Benigno Aquino for seeking to install ”a puppet” in his place.

As in Marcos “New Society” Justices would trot behind Imelda Marcos, shielding her from the sun with a colored parasol. Remember? Marcos made big to-do about complying with Court decisions that he secretly dictated.

The 188 votes by the House of Representatives to dispatch Articles of Impeachment to the Senate continues the President’s “bullying and threats” Corona asserted. On the Supreme Court building steps he vowed not to buckle as did the partisan Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez.

He mocked Aquino’s stance as a “crooked righteous path.” Festooned with black ribbons as court employees chanted: ”CJ”, “CJ”, CJ.” They erupted with 56 rounds of applause Surrounded by wife Cristina and children Corona pledged to thwart an administration bent on “smearing the whole court through “malice” and fallacies.

This was a rally in the old Plaza Miranda mould. Would that happen, say in the lobby of France’s Court of Cassation or steps of the US Supreme Court, adjacent to the Capitol? Unthinkable.

Alas it gave a coup d’ grace to the cherished ideal for “practicing law in the grand manner.” We see instead the Louis XIV syndrome at work
L ’etat c’est moi, this French monarch declared “I am the state” He merged his person with the institution. To humor Versailles elite, he appointed advisors as “estates general.” But he didn’t bothered to confer with them.

Does Corona confuse charges against his person with a blanket smear of the court? No. He’s not your naïve Goldilocks. The raps range from sweeping his statement of assets and liabilities under the rug to .misuse of the Judiciary Development Fund. These do not constitute a indiscriminate tarring of the Supreme Court. However a judiciary can be a convenient shield to deflect charges in a process that will break out of legal straitjackets.
An impeachment is, first and last, a battle for hearts and minds of citizens. So, Corona spoke in Tagalog, to reach the bakya-crowd. He had wife and kids as props.

Corona today plays dragon slayer. But he has two major strikes against him. One, he is a midnight appointee. And second, majority of Filipinos don’t see him as a justice in the mould of a Jose Abad Santos, Cecilia Munoz Palma or a Roberto Concepcion.

Pulse Asia’s latest survey released Tuesaday shows that the least trusted among top national officials is guess who. Of 1,200 respondents, 27 percent “wouldn’t buy a second hand car” from Corona.

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