Impeachment proceedings against P-Noy: A postscript

Voting uniformly three times — 54 no, 4 yes, 0 abstain — on sufficiency in substance of each of the three verified complaints filed against President Aquino, the House committee on justice Tuesday shielded P-Noy from getting impeached.

(The first and second complaints pertain to the Disbursement Acceleration Program that the Supreme Court unanimously declared unconstitutional in four instances of its use.The third dwells on the US-PH Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement signed by the Aquino government last year).

To those knowledgeable about the impeachment proceedings as being not a judicial but mainly apolitical (numbers game) exercise, the voting results were not surprising.Ergo, the 54 P-Noy supporters easily deluged the four votes of the 7-member Makabayan bloc that endorsed the complaints.

 Weeks before the voting, statements from both Malacanang and House leaders already predicted this outcome, given the overwhelming majority that the ruling Liberal Party coalition holds in the 290-member House.

Thus, Malacanang’s reaction — that the House body gave P-Noy the kind of justice he had expected — wasn’t surprising either. Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma explained: “In his interview just the previous week, the President said he was trustful that justice would prevail. And that’s our position on the matter.”

On the other hand, the Makabayan bloc avers: by promptly dismissing the complaints at an early stage of the impeachment proceedings, the committee’s action denied the people’s right to call high public officials, in this instance the President, to account for their acts deemed to have violated the Constitution, other laws, and betrayed public trust.

Why?Because the committee vote (unless overturned by 1/3 of the House members in plenary, which appears unlikely) has foreclosed the next-stage proceedings: furnish P-Noy copies of the complaints with a written notice to reply within 10 days and bar any motion to dismiss. His reply would be furnished the complainants, enabling the two parties to exchange replies and to submit their affidavits.

From such documents the committee should have determined whether the complaints “allege sufficient grounds for impeachment” and if so, to proceed to the next stage: conduct a public hearing to determine probable cause. Should it find probable cause, the committee should submit to the House plenary a resolution setting the Articles of Impeachment. If approved by 1/3 of the members, the Articles should be endorsed to the Senate as the impeachment court.

The committee was to have determined the complaints’ sufficiency in substance based on the endorsers’ “recital of facts constituting the offense charged and determinative of the jurisdiction of the committee.”

Before presenting the first complaint, Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Javier Colmenares appealed for fairness to both the citizen-complainants and President Aquino by enabling the latter to reply to the specific charges constituting culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust.

What were the facts/charges cited that the 54 committee members voted down as “insufficient in substance”?Here are some for your evaluation, dear readers:

On the DAP:

1. P-Noy committed culpable violation of Sections 25(5) and 29 (1) of Article 6 and Section 17 of Article 7 of the Constitution when,

a. Through memos and circulars issued by Budget Secretary Butch Abad, he pooled P157 billion from programs, activities and projects appropriated by Congress in the 2011, 2012 and 2013 national budgets, declared these as savings, and unilaterally directed the disbursements of P144 billion for other purposes;

b. Violated the constitutional ban on transferring funds (from the DAP) to other offices outside the Executive, such as to Congress, the Commission on Audit and the Commission on Elections; and

c. Allocated funds sans “appropriation made by law” to the Bangko Sentral, the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, to augment local governments’ internal revenue allotments, and for landowners’ compensation.

2. P-Noy betrayed public trust by adamantly asserting that his above-cited acts were right as to their intentions, implementation and results, and berated the Supreme Court for declaring these unconstitutional. Also he betrayed public trust by

a. Violating his oath of office to “faithfully and conscientiously… preserve and defend the Constitution, execute its laws…. ”

b. Expanding, worsening the corrupt pork-barrel system by creating a much-bigger presidential pork barrel; and

c. Committing 166 instances of technical malversation of P144 billion in public funds in violation of the anti-graft and corrupt practices law.

On the EDCA:

1. Against the Constitution’s call for an independent foreign policy giving paramount consideration to “national sovereignty, territorial integrity, national interest, and the right to self-determination (Article 2, Section 7),” P-Noy through the EDCA

a. Yielded to the US military the right to occupy, use free of charge with unhampered operational control “agreed locations” anywhere in the country —establish facilities, station troops, “pre-position” and withdraw war materiel, service American warships, airplanes and other war equipment — all in unlimited numbers and for unlimited duration;

 b. By their functions the “agreed locations” will constitute US military bases, which must be covered by a treaty requiring the Senate’s ratification (Article 18, Section 25). Yet P-Noy insists EDCA is only an “executive agreement” that need not be submitted to the Senate.

But Article 7, Section 21 requires any international agreement to be concurred in by at least 2/3 of the members of the Senate.Is P-Noy defying this provision?

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