I was on Radyo Inquirer from 2:00 to beyond 6:00 p.m., extended, willy-nilly, last Tuesday, on impeachment.

Chief Justice Rene Corona slapped PNoy, the impeachment court, the prosecution, the Ombudsman, and a dead private person with no public money involved. Three vehicles were ready for his Great Escape. Scripted. Wily JPE does not enjoy being slapped so openly and slapped back and prevented the sorry flight. Rene - escapee manque.

His bank secrecy waiver was Kenkoy. The 188 Congressmen and Sen. Drilon are not on trial. A red herring. A jaywalker being prosecuted cannot impose as a condition that all other jaywalkers be prosecuted as well. He cannot change the subject.

He might as well have said all Senators and SC Justices should also sign a waiver, an impossible condition. He knew it is not he alone who has secret bank accounts, which assets we did not exclude from R.A. No. 6713. Absurd to us who authored R.A. No. 6713 to exempt foreign currency accounts, at war with the constitutional goals of transparency and accountability, to make us a haven of thieves, a role Switzerland gave up in 1986, in tribute to Prez Cory, and in time turned over billions to us from William Saunders (Macoy) and Jane Ryan (Imelda), thanks to Ponente Rene in July, 2003, but who did not order the thieves prosecuted. Why?

If his dollar accounts were petty or de minimis, he would have disclosed same long ago, and asked “what else can I do for you?”.

Maybe the “walkout” was spontaneous,” such as the need to rush to the CR to answer a call of nature. Rene asked if he was being arrested. Mrs. Corona asked the Senate security chief if martial law was back. Nothing about sickness. He had no urgent LBM problem.

Tearjerking was his account of his sick brother, nice guy Toti, in Medical City, who he says he supports. Maybe both of them belong there after his grand zarzuela last Tuesday.

Di daw po nagnakaw sa gobyerno? Is he just laundering for GMA then? O nagnanakaw lang sa kamaganak, di po sa gobyerno?

“Matagumpay na abogado?”. I started litigating in 1964. We practitioners then were a very small community knowing virtually one another. We never enjoyed the pleasure of Rene’s company.

“Imbento” by the prosecution? Who embellished his Ateneo record?

If you are greedy and shed tears, crocodile is the reptile that comes to mind.

He should have learned in Trial Technique 101 that you do not ask a question the answer to which you don’t already know.

His aborted escape reminds me of my 1986 TV exchange with Sen. Turing Tolentino, who had breeding, and who gently insisted I could not prove that candidate Cory had won. “Pero po, kahit sa anumang tupada, pag na-tyope ang manok ninyo, tumalilis at ayaw ng lumaban, talo.” Tiyope was how wheelchair-bound Rene looked last Tuesday. Foiled. Like GMA.

Impeachment has made the best laid plans of mice and men go awry. I failed to pay my last respects to my Bedan campus contemporary Lito Balquiedra, and could not copy him what I wrote last Wednesday to the Senate and the SC.

“I do not know how the impeachment trial will proceed and end but may I raise most respectfully a separate issue on a guest’s (here, the CJ’s) misbehavior or misconduct in the Senate and a peer’s demeanor.

“The Chief Justice (CJ) quite incredibly left the Senate yesterday with his family without so much as by-your-leave. I got an email that it was premeditated with members of the defense team but I have no proof of it. So let us deal with what was seen by millions, of which judicial notice may be taken. Any litigator knows that no witness on the stand may just leave without permission. The CJ startled the nation by leaving without the courtesy of seeking leave to leave, SOP for anyone with breeding, common sense and some courtroom experience. Direct contempt of the purest kind. No need for a hearing really.

“But, para wala na pong masabi, kindly institute a separate proceeding within your own jurisdictions to censure the CJ as we try to teach the young breeding. He had attacked the Ombudsman, in personal terms, after summoning her, the prosecution, and the Basas by raising a totally unrelated issue (Libis). Ad hominems we look askance at (let alone the ad misericordiams). He had also attacked the President who has never accepted his delicadeza-challenged midnight ascent on which we have varied opinions. (His mother also took her oath before an Associate Justice . . .)

“Given his shocking convenient self-serving claim of sickness after a vigorous performance, he is now in Medical City, . . . He, I humbly submit, must be “softly impeached,” or censured, after his performance yesterday, family and vehicles ready, etc.

“You may also want to examine in the Supreme Court the central point and outer limits of the duties of the Office of the Court Administrator, where loyalty to the country and the institution, should be the fixed star the OCA should go by. Utang na loob has its limits.”

How many Senators are needed to convict Chief Justice (CJ) Rene? 2/3 of all the members of the Senate. 1987 Const., Sec. 3(7). It seems to me it should be 2/3 of those present, not of the entire membership. Suppose only 15, fewer than 2/3, show up on voting day and time? Should all just go home?

But, even if just a baker’s dozen, would vote to convict Rene, hallelujah! He must go. It is a majority. One so widely mistrusted, with a negative poll survey rating, cannot restore faith, confidence and credibility to the SC. To me that is the reason why the process is political, a national inquest into the conduct of few public officials. It is crucial that a CJ must hurdle the Caesar’ Wife test. No permanent friends or enemies, only permanent public interests. He addressed the people last Tuesday. Let the people judge him then.

Rene must have a legally tenable, intellectually respectable and psychologically satisfying explanation. As it is he remains very heavily-damaged goods. A guy who can make false claims about his Ateneo record is capable of anything.

Tuesday’s pathetic performance was no Nixon-type Checkers in 1952, when he won over America’s heartland. Checkmate - after Rene turned Chicken. 16 votes to convict. But Rene voted with his feet last Tuesday and lost beyond a peradventure. Chicken!

You can tell when Rene is lying. His lips move. The Coronas committed a flagrant foul. Penatly: lead the Senate Catholics in reciting the Rosary. In detention. Or government doctors (not his son-in-law in Medical City) may recommend that he rest for the next few years. Good for him. Good for the country.