Where is this impeachment complaint headed?

I must confess I can’t quite figure out what the political opposition’s game plan could be for the second impeachment complaint.

To begin with, the numbers still don’t appear to be with the pro-impeachment forces. Twenty-nine congressmen are listed as "co-complainants" in this "Amended Complaint." But I recognize at least three names that I am fairly certain have not signed, and do not intend to sign, the complaint.

But even if they cave in to pressure from their erstwhile colleagues in the opposition, that’s still well short of the 78 (not 79, evidently) the complainants need either to send the complaint directly to the Senate for trial or override the inevitable "contrary" resolution dismissing the complaint from the House Justice committee. Hecklers from the majority coalition in the House are already ribbing the opposition that they have even lost at least two score of those that voted in plenary last year in favor of sending the complaint to the Senate.

The hype, of course, is that the Amended Complaint now bears the signatures of numerous non-government organizations, private individuals and a battery of fired-up lawyers. The copy I have reflects 19 such NGOs, 10 private individuals and 8 lawyers or firms. However, I understand that the line of people waiting outside the House Secretary General’s office to actually affix their signatures as co-complainants was longer than those lines typically formed for one of Disneyland’s most popular rides.

But as those aforementioned hecklers from the House majority coalition sarcastically noted, the endorsement of only one congressman is required to "initiate" the impeachment, assuming it is filed outside the one-year proscription period under the Constitution and the House impeachment rules. The only relevant number, they stress, is one-third of the members of the House or, at present, 78 to send the case to the Senate.

Thus, they rub in, even if a thousand NGOs, individuals and lawyers were to flood the House Sec-Gen’s office, it still wouldn’t matter one whit to the disposition of the complaint. The hecklers happen to be correct. While the crowds lining up to sign the complaint may make for good publicity and exciting news video footage, they really don’t count when the House decides what to do with that complaint.

Without the 78 signatures on the complaint, the impeachment will be dead if, as fully anticipated, the House justice committee follows the script and finds the complaint insufficient in form or substance. Last year, Rep. Simeon Datumanong’s Justice committee found the Oliver Lozano complaint sufficient in form but insufficient in substance and consigned it to the dump heap. That finding was sustained in plenary when the opposition could only muster 51 votes out of the then requisite 79.

The complainants have mourned the fact that last year’s impeachment complaint wasn’t even given the elementary courtesy of a hearing or, at least, a requirement that the respondent President GMA file an answer to the allegations. They cite that fact as indicative of a whitewash, a monumental cover-up and an abuse of numbers by the majority at the expense of truth.

Maybe it was, but that was exactly what the Impeachment Rules adopted by the House, at the instance, I should point out, of a leading youthful and loyal member of the opposition, allowed in last year’s impeachment. A stalwart among the latter, in the euphoria of getting the rules unstuck from interminable debate and causing the impeachment process to get going, was heard to wonder then what the majority congressmen were snickering about. Well, he soon found out.

As adopted, these Rules do provide, first, for a determination by the House Justice of sufficiency in form and substance. Only if the committee finds sufficiency in form and substance does the requirement for responsive pleadings and presentation of evidence kick in. The majority was snickering precisely because it was never their intention to allow the complaint to pass the Justice committee. The only way to override that finding of insufficiency either in form or substance is to get the concurring votes of one-third of the members of the House for immediate referral to the Senate.

It’s not likely that these Rules will be changed this time around.

Thus, I am amazed when lawyers for the complainants still complain to this day about the denial of their day in court last year. They keep pointing to the impeachment of President Erap Estrada when hearings were held at the Senate where evidence was adduced which, they claim, eventually nailed Erap. For now, I won’t go to the legality or propriety of what transpired then. All I’ll note is that what happened then had everything to do with the fact that the pro-impeachment congressmen had the votes, and a cooperative Speaker, to skirt the House and go directly to the Senate.

During the Erap impeachment, in addition, we kept hearing the admonition that impeachment was a political process, to which legal procedures and rules had to take a back seat. I suspect those pontifications are coming back to haunt us now, as they always do when Constitutional processes are discarded. What else do you call the events in the House in the matter of the impeachment of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, if not the unfolding of a "political" process? You don’t like it? Well, that’s politics.

That’s the significance of the reported adherence of the Catholic Bishops of the Philippines to the Constitutional process of impeachment, wherever it may lead. When the "co-complainants" rejoice that if they are stymied in Congress, they will take the impeachment complaint directly to the people, they will have to take into account the key issue of whether they will do so with the support of a people weary with politicians, as well as with this incessant tampering with Constitutional legal process.

Without the support of the Church, without the support of a public that is suspicious of the motives of people who take it upon themselves to oust a President whenever he or she is deemed to have become unworthy of their trust, I wonder where the complainants are headed for.

I hope they discover before it’s too late that, in the end, the Constitutional and legal route is the only way to go. This way is often inconvenient and inefficient. The results are never assured. But without it, we can forget about living in a civilized and orderly society. We can resign ourselves to staying at the bottom of the heap as a sorry, pathetic banana republic.