WE can discuss endlessly — and with varying degrees of precision — the concepts of burden of proof, burden of evidence, and the more esoteric elements of the law on evidence. I repeat, however, the position I had expressed earlier: the impeachment trial is a “trial” only by analogy to a trial before a court of law. And analogy precisely means both similarity and difference. What should be foremost is what lies at the heart of the matter: political accountability and an inquiry by the people’s elected representatives about the conduct of a high public official.
There is a rule that is a dictate of reason: He who has possession or control of a thing has the obligation to explain where it is or how it has been used. One does not need judicial precedent, not even an express rule of evidence to accept this as a binding precept. It would, in fact, be perverse for someone to accept something and later feign ignorance about where it is or to whom it has passed.
That is the obligation that is now incumbent on Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte, who is the defending party in the impeachment trial before the Senate. She has admitted to having received confidential funds. It was she who asked for them. It was to the office she headed that a generous allocation of the people’s money was consigned. Now, her lawyers, in a bid to get her off the hook, engage in varied maneuvers. Did anyone see her make a deposit to her own account? Is there any showing that she spent the amounts on herself? Was it not some underling who disbursed the amounts?
The trial of the impeached vice president demands of her an explanation: What were the confidential funds used for? And to respond that they are “confidential” and, therefore, not subject to scrutiny as to expenditure is to advance a perverse interpretation of the law. They remain public funds allotted to the vice president. She must explain how they were used. She must prove that there was compliance with the law in their expenditure.
So, all this noise about where the burden of proof lies is a poor attempt at evading a demand of reason — that she to whom the money of the public was entrusted must explain how she spent it. It is this that lies at the very heart of the legal and, more importantly, moral notion of accountability. In the analysis of human action, a human subject attributes to himself through the process of self-ascription an action. “I did it” and corollary to this self-ascription is the demand of reason to explain. In some cases, the explanation calls for an answer to a "why." In this case, the explanation demanded calls for a clear response to “how.”
It matters not that there is no deposit slip that shows that a single farthing from the confidential funds was ever deposited in her personal account. That she never physically laid hands on the bills and the coins is an impertinent consideration. The funds involved were public funds. She was the official who asked for them. It was to her office that the amount was released. It is her office that has never satisfactorily explained how the money was expended or who it was spent on.
In fact, this trial should have very little to do with prosecutorial competence. The facts are evidenced by the documents and the records. We should be hearing from the impeached official her explanation. There is something perverse about requiring the prosecutors to establish culpability as if they were proving an offense under penal law. That is not what this process is all about. It is about demanding Duterte an explanation to the question: What did you do with the millions that were given you in confidential funds?
And that is only one of the questions she must answer at this trial. Only this way would the ongoing impeachment trial be a genuine exercise in political accountability and a public inquisition of a high government official. Anything else engages the Republic in what is starting to appear to be a drawn-out courtroom drama that it should have never been in the first place!
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
