Impeachment threat vs President can be criminal offense — Nograles

MANILA, Philippines — While any impeachment move against President Duterte is unlikely to prosper in a pro-administration Congress, a Malacañang official yesterday explained that anybody who initiates it could be held liable for criminal charges for undermining the presidency.

Secretary to the Cabinet Karlo Alexei Nograles said “threatening” the President is already a criminal offense.

“When the President answered the question directed to him by the media, I said it was in the context if you are threatening the President to some sort of action, and then you threaten him with an impeachment complaint,” Nograles said.

“The mere fact you are threatening the President, the mere fact it is a threat, if it goes to the realm of the threatening, then it is criminal in nature. It is not the impeachment itself. Filing an impeachment (complaint) is not a criminal (offense). But threatening somebody is,” he added.

Nograles, a lawyer by profession, differentiated the filing of impeachment, which is part of the democratic process, to the act of “threatening” to impeach the President or using it to undermine his administration.

“Whether it is criminal in nature that will obviously would have to pass the prosecutors to find probable cause, there is a process there,” he said.

Nograles mentioned that “any threat to a person, depending on the gravity of the threat,” could be considered a crime, depending on the evaluation of prosecutors.   

In an earlier interview with CNN Philippines, Nograles gave context to Duterte’s statements that threatened to jail those who will file impeachment complaints against him.

“If it is under that context (that) they are forcing him under the threat of impeachment, that’s the threat, whatever it is, grave threat, veiled threat, the threat itself, the act of threatening the President may be construed as a crime,” Nograles said.

Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo earlier clarified Duterte’s threat to jail those who want him impeached was just an expression of disgust.

Responding to Duterte’s statement last week, top police officials said arrests would only be made “if there’s violation of the law.”

Critics and opposition leaders said Duterte violated a provision of the Constitution when he spoke on allowing the Chinese to fish in the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

The President made the statement amid the public outcry over the June 9 incident involving a Chinese trawler ramming a fishing boat, leaving 22 Filipino fishermen floundering in the open sea.