Arroyo’s House allies urged to examine impeach evidence

Opposition congressmen and impeachment petitioners pleaded with President Arroyo’s allies in the House of Representatives yesterday to see the evidence they have against her.

They made the plea on the eve of crucial hearings by the committee on justice on the determination of the substance of the remaining impeachment complaint.

Administration lawmakers, however, declared that the purported boxes of evidence the opposition showed to the media only reveal the "weakness" of the impeachment complaint they have filed against the President.

"The publicity stunt offered no actual proof of the President’s guilt, but only revealed the weakness of the opposition’s impeachment complaint against her," said House Deputy Speaker for Mindanao Gerry Salapuddin and Davao del Sur Rep. Douglas Cagas.

The opposition presented to the media seven large carton boxes containing voluminous pieces of evidence which they claimed could prove beyond doubt their charges of lying, cheating, stealing, and allowing extrajudicial killings against Mrs. Arroyo.

"We have the truth, and we want to expose it to the full light of day. We want the people of the Philippines to know the truth and use it as a basis for them to decide how they will move on," Deputy Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano said. He was reading from a joint statement of complainants and opposition congressmen.

"The truth is inside these seven boxes of multi-billion bank accounts, tapes, videos, eyewitness testimonies, and other damaging and convincing evidence. Inside these boxes are evidence of election fraud, including tapes, visual evidence, election paraphernalia, still photographs, and sworn statements by persons involved in cheating, proof of corruption, including paper trail on bank accounts and other financial transactions, Commission on Audit reports, among others," Cayetano said.

He said their seven boxes-full of proof also includes "material, documentary and testimonial evidence on political repression, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances."

"All these we ask our colleagues in Congress to see and appreciate, so that truth and justice prevail.... open these boxes, we ask, for justice is served only when truth is open. We hold the truth - here and now. Let it not be sacrificed at the altar of greed and power politics, lest the next political gale be so strong that our democracy, weakened as it is already, founders upon the shoals of public outrage," he added. — With Delon Porcalla