Roberto Nazareno, the chamber’s secretary, said he returned the complaint to Lozano on the instruction of Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr.
Nazareno said the complaint filed on Monday was defective since it was not sworn to. Also, it was not endorsed by at least one congressman as required under the rules on impeachment.
He said even if these two requirements had been met, he was not sure if the House could accept the Lozano petition since the one-year protection against further impeachment complaints which Mrs. Arroyo enjoys has not expired.
Malacañang was quick to deny the opposition’s charges that the Arroyo administration had dispatched Lozano to re-file the impeachment complaint to preempt a stronger one to be filed by the opposition later.
"The opposition should be more careful and prudent about their accusations," Palace political adviser Gabriel Claudio said. "Attorney Lozano is not with the administration."
Opposition lawmakers said Lozano’s filing of a new impeachment complaint — which, in fact, is a version of the opposition’s amended complaint — had turned the impeachment process into a "rat race" whereby the first to file would be the one recognized by the House.
For his part, incoming presidential chief of staff Michael Defensor said the Palace would face the new impeachment complaint at the appropriate time but was not overly concerned about it.
"Malacañang is focused on governance and on economic reforms, on working hard on political reforms, on the delivery of basic services," Defensor said at a Palace press conference yesterday.
"We know for a fact that focusing on political issues and political concerns will bring us nowhere and the people would appreciate it better if we concentrate on delivering the basic services that are needed," he said.
The President’s one-year protection against further impeachment complaints began on July 25, 2005 when De Venecia referred the original Lozano impeachment complaint to the committee on justice. That was when the failed impeachment process against the President was deemed "initiated."
Under the rules on impeachment, "initiation" means the combination of the act of filing a complaint and the act of referral by the Speaker to the justice committee. Impeachment complaints are sent to the committee in the order of their filing. In the case of the original Lozano complaint, it was the first to be filed and the first referred to the justice panel last year. It was thus the petition that started the impeachment process and triggered the one-year ban on further complaints.
On Sept. 6, 2005, the House dismissed the original Lozano complaint for "lack of merit" after ruling that since it initiated the impeachment process against Mrs. Arroyo, it barred the second complaint filed by lawyer Jose Lopez of Manila and the opposition’s amended complaint.
Lozano reintroduced the amended complaint filed by opposition congressmen and scores of private petitioners because the House had not ruled on its merits and merely declared it as a "barred" petition.
Members of the House minority bloc led by Sorsogon Rep. Francis Escudero, who drafted and signed the amended petition, raised a collective howl of protest against the Marcos lawyer’s decision to re-file their complaint.
They accused Lozano of impropriety for adopting their petition and reintroducing it without their consent. They vowed not to have anything to do with it.
Lozano attached to the complaint photocopies of the old signatures of endorsement of Escudero and his colleagues, but according to Nazareno, these are no longer valid and a fresh endorsement would have to be obtained.
Rep. Rodante Marcoleta of the party-list group Alagad, who endorsed last year’s original Lozano complaint, told reporters that he would not be an endorser of an old or a new Lozano petition.
Marcoleta, who belongs to the majority bloc in the House, said when he signed a resolution of endorsement last year, opposition congressmen and other groups pilloried him for being an instrument of the Arroyo administration.
"Ayaw kong mag-igting ang ganoong haka-haka (I do not want to lend credence to these suspicions)," he said.
Rep. Imee Marcos of Ilocos Norte denounced her family’s former lawyer for re-filing the opposition’s amended complaint.
She said while the Marcoses still consider Lozano as one of their loyalists, she had nothing to do with his decision.
She said she did not know what prompted the lawyer to reintroduce the petition.
"It’s untimely and clearly premature. Its contents are repetitive and the signatures are fraudulent… I also share the sentiments of my colleagues in the opposition in condemning the move taken by Attorney Lozano," Marcos added.
The daughter of the late President Ferdinand Marcos endorsed last year’s amended complaint of the opposition, but during the Sept. 6 vote, when her presence and support mattered the most, she was nowhere to be found, along with five other House members who counted themselves with the minority bloc.
Mrs. Arroyo’s allies are also angry with Lozano. Two of them, Representatives Antonio Cuenco of Cebu City and Marcelino Libanan of Eastern Samar, described the lawyer’s re-filed petition yesterday as "recycled waste."
While the minority sees the hand of the administration in Lozano’s decision to reintroduce the complaint, Cuenco and Libanan said it is the opposition that could be behind the former Marcos family lawyer’s actions.
"We expect the opposition to step up its vilification campaign against the President," they said. — With Paolo Romero