PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. met with House leaders for a “fellowship” on Wednesday while 74 members of various progressive groups filed a second impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte for “betrayal of public trust,” drawing speculations about Malacañang’s real position on the move to impeach Sara. A text message attributed to the President quoted him as saying, “In the larger scheme of things, Sara is unimportant. So please do not file impeachment complaints.”
This was before civil society and other groups filed the first complaint on Monday. Mr. Marcos’ intervention was seen to be in violation of the principle of separation of powers, which mandates the Congress to be independent from and co-equal to the executive and the judicial departments. But whether the members of Congress saw its constitutional implications or not, they readily acceded to the President’s request. And except for the lone official endorser of the complaint — Akbayan party-list Rep. Percival Cendana — none of the President’s Congress allies signed up for the complaint.
Given this, Malacañang did not have to announce it did not support an impeachment complaint. The President’s message made that more than abundantly clear. And Malacañang did not do anything to create the suspicion that it actually supported Sara’s impeachment, while publicly opposing it. In fact, on the day the multisectoral group filed their complaint, Malacañang issued a statement saying it had nothing to do with it. That was a superfluous statement and made a number of observers suspicious.
Is it possible that Malacañang is actually supporting the move to impeach the vice president, while loudly professing to oppose it? Is it guilty of doublespeak? If this is what’s happening, it would not be the first time that public policy would be subverted by official deeds, but it could have disastrous consequences. The Duterte camp is not incapable of creating serious mischief for the nation; former president Rodrigo Duterte alone seems capable of destabilizing the country by challenging Mr. Marcos’ leadership.
Assuming there are no legal obstacles to the House impeaching the vice president, does Congress have the material time to do its job? As the responsible House officials point out, the Congress has only nine session days to go before it goes into its extended Christmas recess on Dec. 18. Unless one-third of all the members of the House affirm the resolution in support of impeachment, thereby rendering prolonged debates unnecessary, the House may not be able to come up with the necessary resolution in nine days. Additionally, it will have to contend with important legislation that the President says cannot be delayed.
We cannot predict what will happen in the Senate. In previous impeachment cases, the Senate had to hold legislative sessions in the morning and the impeachment trial in the afternoon. The same formula could be adopted, but there are some prejudicial questions that the new Senate leadership may have to address before the Senate is able to constitute itself into a Senate impeachment court. The last time the Senate was constituted into an impeachment court, and tried an impeached official, the late former chief justice Renato Corona, the sitting president, the late Noynoy Aquino, paid off 19 of the 23 senator-judges (at the rate of P50 million to P100 million) each in order to convict the respondent and remove him from public office.
On Sept. 25, 2013, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada revealed in a privilege speech the massive payoffs to the senator-judges. He said the senators were informed of their unlawful allocations through a private and confidential letter from the chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance.
Only four senators refused to accept the bribes — then-senator (now President) Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the late Miriam Defensor-Santiago, the late Joker Arroyo and Panfilo Lacson. Of these four, three voted to acquit Corona, namely Marcos, Santiago and Arroyo, while Lacson voted to convict.
The bribery was confirmed by then-budget secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad, who said his office had disbursed P1.107 billion from the so-called Disbursement Acceleration Program to the 19 senator-judges for no specific legal purpose. Under the Constitution, “no money shall be paid out of the Treasury except in pursuance of an appropriation made by law.” There was nothing in the law that authorized the release of such funds to the senators, and they were not entitled to them either.
None of the alleged recipients disputed the official revelations by Estrada or Abad. In my view, these invalidated the trial, and should have led to Noynoy Aquino’s ouster and to the prorogation of the Senate. It was a complete miscarriage of justice. But nothing else happened. If Sara Duterte were to be impeached for her crimes, and the articles of impeachment against her brought to the Senate, I believe it would be necessary to first wipe the face of the Senate clean of the stigma of official bribery and injustice.
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