Reflection Paper: Conscience on Corona: My conscience is clear and Impeachment court urged: vote according to conscience articles In our

study of the Christian Ethics, we were presented with the general idea of conscience as that principle or sense that summons us to love what is good and avoid what is evil. This conscience can be classified as either true conscience or erroneous conscience. Identifying conscience from such types may provide us the guide to whether to follow and sustain a particular conscience or not. An example of the rules for its application would be the principle that a person who follows an erroneous conscience which causes injury to others should be prevented in obeying such conscience. To state its counterpart, an erroneous conscience must not be prevented as long as it is not detrimental to others. Thus, it is necessary to sort out from which between true or erroneous does a persons conscience belong in order for us to validly judge whether his action is permissible or not. It is, then, interesting to examine the type of conscience Corona has in his statement: My conscience is clear and to evaluate whether the Impeachment Court really voted according to their conscience. Former Chief Justice Corona was certain when he said during his first take on the witness stand of the impeachment trial that his conscience is clear. We can make this position as his first premise for all the controversial actions he performed during his whole stay as a Chief Justice in the Supreme Court. Later on in the impeachment trial proceedings, it was found out, as what he has confessed, that he omitted his foreign currency deposits in his required SALN due to the fact that he is permitted to do so by virtue of the banking secrecy and foreign currency deposit units (FCDU) laws or at least to how he interprets such laws. With such, we may say that Corona is following a certain conscience in performing the controversial omission of foreign currency deposits. He believes he is right in doing so because of the said laws that is why he has a clear conscience. The question now is whether this conscience mentioned by Corona is true or erroneous. As the impeachment trial reached its conclusion, the Senator-Judges, as the peoples representatives and provider of ordinances of reason and morality, gave the set of reasons which determines the guilt of Corona. One of the reasons for the vote of conviction is the position that Coronas interpretation of the banking secrecy and foreign currency deposit units laws is erroneous. It was said that this interpretation that permits government officials to omit their dollar accounts in the required SALN violates the transparency required of them by the Constitution. We see here that the basis of the conscience of Corona, which is his interpretation of the FCDU laws, is erroneous, and thus, we say that the conscience he mentioned earlier as being clear, is in fact, erroneous. Is it right that Corona was deposed as a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and thereby preventing him in performing external deeds to the office that follow his erroneous conscience? I think so. This is because Coronas erroneous conscience would produce detrimental effects to the nation if it is left not suppressed or corrected. Transparency and accountability would be greatly compromised if government officials can actually evade obligations by the reason of their erroneous interpretation of the law. Corruption, then, will be more available to those who have no conscience. Majority of the Senator-Judges who voted for conviction of Corona posited the argument that Coronas interpretation of FCDU laws is erroneous. Did they employ their conscience when they gave this reason for their vote as urged by the Prosecutors? I think so too. The interpretation of the FCDU laws is never a trivial matter particularly when a government officials transparency is being questioned. The Senator-Judges adjudicated only based on what they think is good for the State. To uphold an erroneous interpretation of law that would ultimately give rise to many instances of corruption and circumvention of rules would be contrary to the idea of conscience which summons us to avoid evil.