Shifting the focus

It was clear to me, prior to Mike Defensor’s own version of Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventure, that GMA’s administration coalition in the House of Representatives was prepping for a big but quick finish to the impeachment charges.

It was hard to conclude otherwise, considering all the tip-offs about the intended early skirmishing on which among the several impeachment complaints would be deemed to kick off the one-year ban on multiple complaints and the expected battles over the quantum of evidence the House Committee on Justice would require to sustain a finding of sufficiency in form and substance.

In addition, the majority in the committee evidently intended to wear down the opposition by fully utilizing the 60 session days allowed under the Constitution to produce a report and the corresponding resolution on sufficiency in form and substance. For instance, to establish "probable cause," the standard set in the House rules, the committee would require testimonial and documentary evidence.

Thus, to the opposition’s horror, the stage is set for a dismissal of its amended complaint. The Justice Committee will rule that the first Oliver Lozano complaint will be considered. The others, including the Jose Lopez complaint and the opposition’s amended complaint, will be deferred to next year if they are re-filed.

Justice Committee chair Simeon Datumanong has given very clear signals on this. He argues that all three impeachment complaints were referred to his Committee on the same day but that the record of the House shows that the Lozano was filed first in point of time. According to him, where several complaints are referred to the Committee on the same day, the Supreme Court ruling that the one-year ban begins upon such referral means that the committee can rely on House records to determine which was filed first.

He acknowledges that the High Court has not ruled squarely on the matter and that the opposition may go to court if the committee discards the amended complaint. That prospect, however, does not faze him. In fact, I detect a glint in his eye when this possibility is mentioned. Is that the word "delay" I see flashing on his benign visage?

Actually, the Justice Committee chair has the support of several past presidents of a prestigious association of lawyers who came out with a full-page ad agreeing with Datumanong’s reading of the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Francisco vs. House of Representatives.

The Bar leaders added that the opposition’s amended complaint was filed after the Lozano complaint had been answered and without the permission of Congress.

Apparently, earlier assurances by Majority Leader Rep. Prospero Nograles that the amended complaint would not be blocked on that ground may simply be ignored.

Another basis cited by the legal luminaries was that the amended complaint relied on "illegally taped conversations which are inadmissible being prohibited by the Constitution and the Anti-Wiretapping Law." Whether coincidental or not, this too happens to be the line of reasoning of the majority in the committee.

In other words, the Garci tapes had a snowball’s chance in hell of being admitted as evidence in the impeachment, as long as it remained a legal process. And since the Catholic bishops, many business groups and professional associations had all called for respect for Constitutional remedies, there would be no general aversion, it was thought, to the exclusion of the tapes whose authenticity was, in the first place, under serious doubt.

Indeed, the observation of those Bar association leaders that the impeachment complaint is a "disguised election contest" has, on its face, some legal veracity. It does seem Constitutionally sound to lodge the power to deal with questions of electoral fraud in the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, not the Congress sitting as an impeachment body.

That, in my view, has changed with Mike Defensor’s revelations of the alleged findings of expert Barry Dickey. He has managed two, possibly unintended consequences: First, the authenticity of the Garci tapes, not the illegality of how they were obtained, has now become the central issue of GMA’s presidency. Second, the focus has shifted away from the Congress into the more contentious, and notoriously unpredictable, arena of public opinion and perception.

In this new arena, the admissibility of the tapes as evidence in any judicial, administrative or legislative proceeding is irrelevant. What matters is what the public wants to believe, not what the law says. The argument over whether Dickey’s findings in court were admissible or not, whether they were weighty or not, is pointless. They will not, need not, be submitted to any body but they will still be hotly debated.

The process, in other words, has become mostly political and only incidentally legal. The minority, as it has vowed to do, can now merely go through the motions of impeachment but devote its energies on selling the idea that the proceedings are a moro-moro and that the real battle is out there for public perception where the ultimate prize is the people’s judgment that our President not only stole her mandate but is unfit to govern.

In the initial sparring, there is much confusion on what exactly Dickey said and what was added by local "experts" such as Jonathan Tiongco who allegedly is not exactly a disinterested authority. Over the weekend, Dickey was quoted as clarifying that he found "anomalies" in the tapes sent to him by Mike, but didn’t say they were "spliced," contrary to Mike’s dramatic claims.

There were more questions raised than answered in the purported Dickey report. We must read the full report or get him to come to Manila and face questions on his findings. The latter, his quoted statements seem to indicate, is unlikely. In addition, the role of Tiongco and other local engineers should be thoroughly explained.

The Gilbert Remulla-led joint House committee inquiry on the tapes, which has largely skirted the issue of authenticity, now wants to tackle it head-on.

Impeachment? Let it go where it will go. Like many others, what I want to know once and for all is whether the Garci tapes are authentic, faked, spliced or anomalous. Then, I think, we should all have a better idea of what we ought to do.