A MEMBER of the independent minority bloc in the House of Representatives on Thursday filed the first impeachment complaint against President Duterte.
Party-list Rep. Gary Alejano of Magdalo said the impeachment complaint was based on Duterte’s alleged culpable violation of the Constitution, bribery, betrayal of public trust, graft and corruption and other high crimes.
The complaint was filed on the first day of Congress’s Lenten break and a day after the House leadership removed 12 leaders who voted against death penalty from ranking positions and committee chairmanships.
“We are of the firm belief that President Duterte is unfit to hold the highest office of the land, and that impeachment is the legal and constitutional remedy to this situation,” said Alejano, a former Marine captain.
However, Palace allies, led by Speaker Pantaleon D. Alvarez, were quick to dismiss the move to unseat Duterte.
In addition, Alejano said all the actions of Duterte that were enumerated in the complaint “constitute proper grounds for his impeachment pursuant to Sections 2 and 3, Article XI of the 1987 Constitution.”
“Duterte committed high crimes of bribery, multiple murder and crimes against humanity when he adopted a state policy of inducing policemen, other law-enforcement authorities and vigilante groups into the extrajudicial killings of more than 8,000 persons who were merely suspected of being drug offenders,” he said.
Alejano said Duterte’s involvement in multiple murder as mastermind of the Davao Death Squad is one of the grounds for the complaint.
“He committed graft and corruption with the hiring of 11,000 ghost employees when he was still a mayor of Davao City; and his unexplained wealth amounting to more than P2 billion in deposits and credits that flowed into his numerous bank accounts,” he said.
The lawmaker said the filing of this complaint will prove that there is no destabilization plot against Duterte, saying impeachment is a constitutional process of ousting a sitting president.
Alejano said he will still file a supplementary complaint regarding the President’s alleged secret arrangement with China over the ownership of Benham Rise.
Dismissive
ALVAREZ initially greeted the filing of the complaint with a dismissive text message: “We are all entitled to our own stupidity hehehe.”
He later sent another message saying: “All charges are fabricated, they seem to believe their own lies.”
Alvarez expressed confidence that the impeachment complaint against Duterte will not prosper in the lower chamber.
“Not only confident, but very, very confident [that it will not prosper],” he said.
“When you allege something, you have to prove it, that’s the rule, that’s the law,” Alvarez added.
He said the complaint by Alejano will be rejected, owing to lack of substance.
“Let’s not talk about the numbers game here. I don’t think the complaint is sufficient in substance,” Alvarez added.
For his part, House Majority Leader Rodolfo C. Fariñas said it has turned out that the Senate hearing on the alleged Davao Death Squad was a preview or dry run of the impeachment complaint.
“I cannot imagine how Representative Alejano can state under oath in paragraph 3 of the ‘Verification’ of his complaint that ‘I/We hereby confirm and affirm that the material allegations made therein are true of my/our own knowledge and as culled from authentic records’,” he said.
Fariñas said Alejano is the lone complainant, “yet, the ‘verification’ uses both the singular and plural pronouns ‘I/We’ and ‘my/our’.”
“Which goes to the second and most important observation: the allegations made in the complaint are obviously not of his own knowledge, since most of them are palpably hearsay, either from what he read or saw on the news or from tales of Sen. [Antonio] Trillanes,” he said.
According to Fariñas, most of the allegations were allegedly committed when Duterte was mayor or vice mayor.
“An official is impeached for acts committed in his present office. Since the allegations made while he was mayor were widely publicized and known by the voters when they elected him as President, the clear mandate given to him by the people has to be respected. This is the jurisprudence even with respect to elected or reelected local officials,” he said.
In Malacañang, Presidential Spokesman Ernesto C. Abella said the impeachment complaint against Duterte was “too well coordinated as to seem coincidental” and “part of a larger scheme of things”.
At the same time, Abella maintained that Duterte had not committed any of the offenses he is accused of, including sanctioning the thousands of extrajudicial killings that have marked his war on drugs.
Sen. Panfilo M. Lacson Sr. said the Magdalo Party-list “should not be criticized, much less mocked, for filing the impeachment complaint.”
“At least this time they are not doing an Oakwood,” he added, referring to the short-lived mutiny by junior military officers, who included Alejano and Trillanes, against then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2003.
“All I can say is, without necessarily associating myself with them in the matter of impeaching PRRD [Duterte], my simple message is, good luck to them,” Lacson added.
Senate Majority Leader Vicente C. Sotto III refused to comment because, “in case it reaches the Senate, we will be an impeachment court and, therefore, should be impartial.”
With Butch Fernandez