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Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Vote kills plaint to impeach Arroyo
MANILA -- Pandemonium and a walkout by opposition legislators marred Tuesday's hearing by the House justice committee on the impeachment complaints filed against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
In the end, the justice committee, minus most of the opposition legislators, voted 52 to 2 to declare the amended impeachment case filed by the minority and party-list legislators as a separate complaint from the case filed by private lawyer Oliver Lozano.
The opposition congressmen walked out of the plenary hall in protest of the decision of House committee on justice chairman Representative Simeon Datumanong of Maguindanao to stop the debate and vote on whether the amended complaint should be treated as a separate case.
The Constitution only allows one impeachment complaint a year against an official.
"Mr. Chairman this is too much. You cannot railroad the proceedings," Representative Allan Peter Cayetano shouted.
The impeachment proceedings are the opposition's last realistic hope of ousting Arroyo, following failed attempts to mobilize Army-backed "people power" protests that toppled two previous presidents including her predecessor.
Cayetano, spokesman for the pro-impeachment congressmen, said the President's allies in the justice panel are evading the amended case because they prefer the "fake" Lozano complaint so that they can easily dismiss it for "insufficiency in form."
The opposition complaint includes allegations Arroyo betrayed the public through electoral fraud, as well as charges that her family was involved in illegal gambling and that human rights were violated under her rule.
House security officers scuffled with protesters in the gallery as opposition supporters unfurled an "Impeach" banner and chanted slogans calling for the President's resignation.
Susan Roces, widow of Arroyo's closest rival Fernando Poe Jr., was among those in the gallery.
Roces, in an interview, said she attended the hearing to support the pro-impeachment congressmen. She refused to comment on the way the hearing was being held.
Cayetano led his colleagues in the minority bloc in presenting and waving alleged "tampered" election returns during the hearing to prove that "cheating indeed transpired in last year's elections."
Datumanong suspended the hearing at 4 p.m. to give way for the plenary session wherein Surigao del Sur Representative Robert "Ace" Barbers Jr. asked for a privilege speech because he had something important to announce before a large number of people inside the session hall.
When the hearing resumed at 4:30 p.m., Barbers asked the justice committee to look into the allegations made by former social welfare secretary Dinky Soliman that the complaint filed by Lozano is a "sham."
Barbers asked the panel to summon Soliman to shed light on the report. But this was rejected by Datumanong, who immediately divided the committee to pave the way for the voting.
This prompted the entire opposition to storm out of the hearing, hurling documents in the air and denouncing the proceedings.
As of Tuesday night, Representative Prospero Nograles was still negotiating with the minority congressmen to attend the hearing Wednesday.
Arroyo spokesman Romulo Macalintal said the walkout appeared to have been planned.
"They are trying to scuttle the impeachment proceeding because they know their case is weak and they don't have any evidence," Macalintal said.
The justice committee may eventually decide that even the first impeachment complaint is too weak to go to the full House of Representatives.
The opposition could overrule that but would need 79 votes in the full house-one third of the membership-to send the complaint to the Senate for trial.
Opposition Representative Ronaldo Zamora conceded earlier Tuesday: "We don't have the numbers."
The Arroyo camp estimates her opponents have fewer than 50 supporters.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said it would be good if the impeachment complaint against the President is resolved before she leaves for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States for the United Nations General Assembly on September 10. (AFP/JFF/JMR/MSN/Sunnex)
Reposted with corrections in the second paragraph
(August 31, 2005 issue)
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