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Thursday, August 11, 2005
Row over impeach venue, rules stalls body
MANILA -- Arguments over rules and the venue of the proceedings marred the first day of the House committee on justice hearing looking into the impeachment complaints filed against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
These resulted in the suspension of the hearing Wednesday.
"They are trying to muzzle us," Iloilo Representative Rolex Suplico lamented after justice committee chairman Simeon Datumanong called for a closed-door meeting.
Aside from protests on the venue of the hearing, several congressmen also objected to Datumanong's ruling to bar non-committee members from asking questions at the deliberations.
Datumanong reset the impeachment hearing at 1:30 p.m. Monday in the plenary hall, after the legislators objected to the use of the Andaya Hall of the Batasan Pambansa complex in Quezon City.
The congressmen said the venue was too small to hold all of them and that not all of the microphones were working.
The 84 members of the committee instead went on executive session to discuss which among the three impeachment complaints filed against the President should be tackled by the panel.
Lawyer Oliver Lozano, a known ally of deposed president Joseph Estrada, first filed an impeachment complaint against the President. The second complaint was filed by lawyer Jose Rizalino Lopez, who is reportedly connected with a law firm being supervised by the Arroyo family. The third is an amended complaint filed by congressmen belonging to the opposition and party-list groups.
The President is facing accusations of electoral fraud in last year's polls and corruption through jueteng payoffs to Arroyo family members.
Arroyo, through her lawyer Pedro Ferrer, filed a motion before the committee asking to strike out the amended complaint.
Ferrer said the revised complaint should be considered as a separate complaint from the one that was filed by Lozano because the President already answered it.
He argued that the amended complaint violates the prohibition on the filing of a second impeachment case against an impeachable official within one year after a first case has been filed as mandated by the 1987 Constitution.
The House committee will determine within 60 session days whether the impeachment complaint or the consolidation of the three impeachment complaints is in conformity with the constitutional requirements of sufficiency in form and in substance.
Once the complaint is found to be sufficient in both, the committee will then make a recommendation to the plenary, which will decide whether to either uphold or dismiss the report.
The committee can only start its preliminary investigation if the plenary will uphold its report.
In allaying the opposition's fears that the process will be skewed in favor of the President, Eastern Samar Representative Libanan said "the majority has been in its best behavior since the crisis erupted."
"As what had been in the past, the minority will be afforded their due during the hearings. All their rational requests will be respected and, in all likelihood, accommodated," he said.
The committee uses impeachment rules of the 11th Congress, the rules applied during the impeachment case of Estrada. (JFF/Sunnex)
(August 11, 2005 issue)
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