MANILA, Philippines - Deemed lacking in substance, the impeachment complaint against President Duterte met an early end at the House committee on justice yesterday.
All 42 of the 50 committee members present at the hearing voted to declare the complaint lacking in substance, effectively consigning it to the trash bin. Forty-one voted that it was sufficient in form.
“We will convene again so that the committee will make its report and submit this to the plenary,” committee chairman Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali said after banging the gavel to signal the adjournment of the nearly five-hour hearing on the matter.
House Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas made it clear to complainant-endorser Rep. Gary Alejano of party-list Magdalo that it was only “for the sake of liberality” that the committee had acknowledged the complaint as having complied with requisites, as per their agreement in an executive session.
Alejano’s complaint was based on allegations Duterte had amassed ill-gotten wealth and ordered the killing of thousands in the course of his war on drugs.
In a supplemental complaint, Alejano also accused Duterte of failing to defend the country’s sovereign rights and territorial claims when he reportedly allowed Chinese presence in Benham Rise in the Philippine Sea.
Fariñas said lawmakers cannot just entertain impeachment complaints, especially if complainants do not have “personal knowledge” or authentic documentation of the impeachable acts being alleged against officials.
“I am warning you that you may be subjected to an ethics case here because you are stating under oath but as it turned out, your verification is not true at all,” Fariñas told Alejano.
The Ilocos Norte congressman cautioned Alejano he could be haled to court for perjury.
“Clearly, it is not of his (Alejano’s) personal knowledge, that’s the defect here,” Fariñas pointed out.
“If we follow you and take the complaint to the Senate, we will appear stupid because all we have is evidence based on hearsay,” he said in Filipino.
“He didn’t have any personal knowledge, and if you look at the documents, these have not been duly authenticated. These were in effect all hearsay,” Umali said.
Alejano and his colleague in the so-called Magnificent 7, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, were allowed to speak and manifest their objections to the junking of the complaint even if they were not committee members.
Lagman accused Fariñas of consistently blocking his request to be a committee member.
House Deputy Majority Leader Juan Pablo Bondoc, chairman of the rules rewriting committee, told his colleagues in the super majority coalition “we are all within our rights to dismiss this impeachment complaint and submit this to the plenary for (final) approval.”
House Deputy Speakers Fredenil Castro and Gwendolyn Garcia agreed, with the former saying Alejano’s fatal mistake was his “categorical, clear admission” of having no personal knowledge of his accusations against the President.
Garcia said the impeachment exercise “holds us back from our main job of legislation.”
Foolhardy
Other administration lawmakers expressed belief it would be foolhardy to attempt to expel a sitting Chief Executive who enjoys overwhelming public support.
“It is an exercise in futility, given his overwhelming support not only in the Congress but from the Filipino people as well. My peers are politically astute enough to realize that no impeachment complaint will gain traction among the people,” Rep. LRay Villafuerte said.
“We need this impeachment like a hole in the head. I believe that we could better spend our time crafting reform laws that would help President Duterte achieve his government’s ambitious goal of sustaining the growth momentum,” the Camarines Sur lawmaker added.
Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, chairman of the House committee on dangerous drugs, said an impeachment complaint will “not prosper in a forum where accepted legal procedures are observed, respected.”
“Let’s not be distracted by this divisive political exercise. Instead, let us allow our President to move on with the business of government to serve and protect the people,” the Mindanao lawmaker stressed.
Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles, chairman of the committee on appropriations, said the impeachment complaint is more than just an issue on sufficiency in form and substance.
“I’m just happy that this is over and the House can finally attend to other more important issues. There is no wisdom in this impeachment complaint which was obviously a haphazard effort to malign and discredit the President,” he said.
Nograles’ brother and fellow lawmaker Jericho Jonas of party-list Puwersa ng Bayaning Atleta also welcomed the decision of Umali’s panel.
“Why would we allow the impeachment of the President when we are fully supportive of his programs, especially so that some of the issues raised in the impeachment complaint were based on hearsay?” he said.
Reacting to the House committee on justice’s decision, Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III said the upper chamber has “no other choice but to respect it because in the first place, they were the ones who examined thoroughly and in detail the impeachment complaint.”
“The senators sit as judges, hence we should really be passive,” Pimentel pointed out.
Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, a colleague of Alejano in the Magdalo group, said while the rejection was totally expected, it was still a source of dismay.
“We were expecting that Congress will be an instrument to find out the truth,” Trillanes said.
“Now that there’s a cover-up, we’ll go through other modes of how to expose these truths… but we can’t control the outcome,” he said without elaborating. He, however, stressed the other modes he was referring to were not extra-constitutional.
Not surprising
For the President’s chief legal counsel, the junking of the impeachment complaint was expected.
“The impeachment complaint will not reach first base because the allegations are based on hearsay. Others are outright false,” Salvador Panelo said in a statement.
He said Alejano was just after free publicity.
“The complaint is intended to besmirch the reputation of (President Duterte) and to get the three minutes of fame of the complainant,” he said.
Asked to react to Alejano’s plan to take his complaint against Duterte to the International Criminal Court, Panelo said: “Tell him to plant trees in his province to protect our environment instead of creating a forest of lies against the President.”
Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said the junked impeachment complaint “was from rehashed, trumped up charges aimed at undermining the duly constituted government.”
“The President respects a co-equal branch of government and does not interfere in the political exercise. Neither is he beholden to any group and he remains focused on governance,” Abella said.
He said improving the welfare of the Filipino people would continue to be the President’s “paramount consideration.”
Even Vice President Leni Robredo expressed belief an impeachment complaint against President Duterte would not prosper.
“I think it will not prosper in the sense that impeachment is a political process, and our President is very popular,” Robredo said in an interview in Mintal, Davao City yesterday.
The Vice President made the statement a few hours before the House justice committee voted to declare the impeachment rap as having no substance.
“If we base on the statements of the members of the House, it appears that it will only get a little support,” she said.
The Vice President, however, cited the importance of the House deliberating on the sufficiency in form of the impeachment complaint as part of democratic process.
Robredo is also facing threats of impeachment for allegedly betraying the public trust when she revealed alleged police abuses in the government’s war on drugs in a video message sent to the United Nations.
Trillanes facing charges
Meanwhile, the businesswoman who claimed to have been bribed by Trillanes to testify against Duterte on the killings by the so-called Davao death squad (DDS) sought yesterday Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II’s help in pressing charges against the senator.
Accompanied by lawyer Bruce Rivera, Guillermina Arcillas met with Aguirre and manifested her plan to press criminal charges against Trillanes.
Arcillas reportedly declined Aguirre’s offer to have her covered by the witness protection program.
“She wants to file a case. She was offered witness protection, but we didn’t want it at this point since we don’t want this thing to be colored by politics. We just have to make sure that she was properly secured,” Rivera revealed in an interview after a closed-door meeting with the justice chief.
Arcillas said she sought help from the DOJ after receiving death threats that she believed came from the camp of the senator.
“No other than Senator Trillanes,” she told reporters when asked who she thought was behind the threats.
She also reiterated that she has no links with President Duterte and has never talked to him.
Rivera, former lawyer of pork barrel scam queen Janet Lim-Napoles, clarified that he is not a lawyer of Arcillas and that he only accompanied her to the office of Aguirre.
“She has a lawyer in Davao City who will handle everything. I’m just here to help her out in talking with Secretary Aguirre and deciphering for everyone on how we are going to go about it,” he explained.
Arcillas earlier claimed that one of Trillanes’ staff members offered her P1 million to implicate Duterte in the DDS killings and support the testimonies of witnesses Edgar Matobato and Arthur Lascañas. Trillanes has denied Arcillas’ allegation, calling her a “planted witness.” – With Alexis Romero, Paolo Romero, Helen Flores, Edith Regalado, Edu Punay