The Philippine Online Chronicles

An impeachment case against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has been declared sufficient in form by the House Committee on Justice and is now pending at the House of Representatives.

The “fourth impeachment complaint” against the president yesterday overcame “its first hurdle...despite an attempt by Bohol Rep. Adam Jala to return it to the complainants for supposed defects,” the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) reported. According to the Business Mirror, administration legislators had earlier “rejected the opposition's suggestion of protracted proceedings, saying that House rules provide for a timetable for the resolution of an impeachment case.”

The opposition wants to have more time to “flesh out the various issues raised against Arroyo” as the House Committee on Justice, headed by Quezon City Rep. Matias Defensor, “has set a four-day marathon hearing on the impeachment complaint” beginning Tuesday, the Manila Standard Today said. According to Bayan Muna Rep. Teodoro Casiño, the marathon schedule was supposedly “meant to junk the complaint as soon as possible.”

“...[W]e don’t see any reason why we should rush the hearings [on the complaint], that you would saturate the committee members [with information] and then on the fourth day [they] would have to decide,” Casiño said. “The danger...here is that, just like in the previous years, there would be a blatant dismissal of the complaint.”

The next step will be to determine if the case is sufficient in substance, which Business Mirror said is “described as the 'bloody part' of the proceedings.” Legislators will have to look at the arguments contained in the complaint and say if they are good enough reasons to possibly unseat the country's highest official.

The impeachment complaint, PDI said, was filed by businessman Jose “Joey” de Venecia III, lawyer Harry Roque, and Iloilo Vice Gov. Rolex Suplico, along with Edita Burgos Concepcion Empeño and Erlinda Cadapan, the mothers of two missing activists.

The “grounds cited in the complaint” included the “P728-million fertilizer fund scam, the bribery of lawmakers allegedly to support the sham impeachment [complaint] against the President [filed last year], human rights violations and the scuttled $329-million National Broadband Network deal with China's ZTE Corp.,” PDI reported.

There are three other impeachment cases filed in Congress, the Philippine Star said. The other complaints are “from lawyer Guillermo Sotto, lawyer Oliver Lozano and the group of Manuel Quezon III.”

Meanwhile, the House will also decide on Wednesday “what to do with an intervention filed by a group of bloggers who want the President held accountable for a provisional agreement with Muslim secessionists to expand the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao which the Supreme Court invalidated,” PDI reported.

Defensor said he “considered [it] a new complaint” as it “raised a new issue and is thus “barred since only one impeachment pleading could be filed in a year...[and] the [Justice] committee has not acquired jurisdiction over it,” according to PDI. The committee will “vote on Wednesday” whether to accept the intervention or not.

Photo: “burn GMA burn!” by Keith Bacongco, taken from Flickr.com. Licensed under Creative Commons license number BY-2.0-DEED.EN.
Video: “QTV: House adjourns hearing of impeach complaint vs Arroyo,” courtesy of GMA News.

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