Dumbest impeachment try ends in a whimper
OUT of the eight impeachment attempts against high officials in our history, the Marcos-Romualdez plot against Vice President Sara Duterte is the dumbest. It was also extremely costly both in terms of the finances they mobilized and its political cost for the duo.
It is dead in the water, with the Senate adjourning starting today until June 2, four months before the midterm elections in May, and a mere four weeks before a new, 20th Congress assumes power.
No Senate, nobody to undertake the impeachment trial. The impeachment attempt was aborted practically in a hilarious scene.
The duo’s minions, the Left party-list congressman, backed up by a Yellow-Pink mob in the gallery, jumped up and down in celebration at around 4 p.m. last Wednesday the moment Speaker Martin Romualdez announced that 215 representatives, or more than the required two-thirds membership of the House of Representatives, signed the impeachment complaint. He ordered it to be transmitted to the Senate for the latter to schedule the trial.
Romualdez’s longtime minion, House Secretary Reginald Velasco, in a convoy escorted by four police motorcycles, rushed through the thick traffic to the Senate on the other side of Manila to deliver the articles of impeachment and the 215 purported list of signatures.
Sweating
Visibly sweating, Velasco handed over the papers contained in a crumpled Manila folder to Senate Secretary Renato Bantug, beaming with pride that he had beaten the clock in accomplishing the task his master gave him.
While most media reported that the Senate “had formally received the impeachment complaint” (as ABS-CBN claimed), which made news internationally, it did not. Bantug explained that his receipt of the complaint was merely ministerial (read: clerical) — and he had to do “staff work” before he submits it to the Senate President, the Senate’s representative.
About 30 minutes later though, as Bantug was doing the “staff work” and with Velasco — who is neither a lawyer nor a politician — lecturing him that the complaint must be taken up ASAP by the Senate’s justice committee, Sen. Joel Villanueva took to the floor to make a motion for the chamber to adjourn starting today until June 2, after the May 12 elections and four months before a new Senate convenes on July 28. With his trademark “me-worry” grin, Senate President Francis Escudero, finding no objections to Villanueva’s motion, announced the Senate’s adjournment until June 2.
Since the Senate did not officially receive the complaint before it adjourned, it was as if it was thrown to the wastebasket. After the celebratory cheers in the House of Representatives, Romualdez could only whimper.
Smiling
Many of the senators were grinning ear to ear, relieved of the task of hearing what they knew were silly accusations (“Sara has an attitude problem,” “she’s quiet versus China’s aggression in the South China Sea”) or ones impossible to prove (such as Sara’s alleged misuse of confidential funds — confidential for Chrissakes). For the 11 senators running for reelection, the trial would mean precious time for campaigning lost. (The Corona trial was in 2012, when there was no scheduled election).
These reelectionists, of course, are smart enough not to risk being portrayed in the media as a persecutor of the highly popular Sara. Or this time around, they know there isn’t the kind of funds such as the hundreds of millions called the “Disbursement Acceleration Fund” that the Aquino III administration used as a carrot to get the Senate to convict the late Chief Justice Renato Corona.
Marcos and Romualdez are deluded if they think that the Senate will take up the impeachment complaint in the two months after they reconvene on June 2 and step down July 28 as the new Senate convenes.
Marcos and Romualdez are back to square one, and a new impeachment process at the House of Representatives would have to be initiated, unless they can file at the Supreme Court to get the high court to agree with their argument that the impeachment is not a law, but a resolution, which the 20th Senate is legally obligated to take up. Fat chance that would happen, and even if the court agrees with their silly argument, the Senate will be so incensed at being ordered to do, so they’ll indeed convene an impeachment trial and find Sara innocent in three days.
Costly
The Marcos-Romualdez duo’s impeachment plot against Sara has been costly. Viral in the media — but so far unproved — has been the rumor that the 215 representatives who voted for Sara’s impeachment were promised that P50 million in government dole out moneys and P100 million in public works funds for each of their districts. There are unverified rumors that each representative was also given P10 million in cash. Marcos and Romualdez also most likely spent huge funds to get four Congress committees to undertake hearings to publicize what would later be formalized as the impeachment complaints. These funds allegedly were raised after the Congress bicameral conference committee revised the budget that was initially submitted, and cut out billions of funds intended for high-priority projects.
With those allegations aired, it is unlikely that Marcos and Romualdez will be able to give congressmen the government funds they promised to give to their districts. Finance Secretary Ralph Recto and Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman — both relatively respected officials — won’t be so eager to be the Marcos and Romualdez paymasters for the funds promised to the congressman. The congressmen, of course, would not take that sitting down, and would likely retaliate — and withdraw their support for Speaker Romualdez, and even take him down from his post.
The foiling of Sara’s impeachment is the third plot by the Marcos-Romualdez duo to prevent the vice president from ever succeeding Marcos. If it had succeeded, it would have banned Sara from running for any public post.
The first plot was the so-called Pirma plot early last year to amend the Constitution to change our system of government into a single-chamber parliament, which would allow Marcos’ cousin, Romualdez, to rule as prime minister.
Aborted
This was aborted when it was disclosed that the plan was to use P5 billion in poverty-alleviation funds to finance the campaign for that amendment of the Constitution. The Marcos’ plot was also foiled after the Senate officially opposed it, since the senators saw that they would not be able to vote as a chamber whether or not to approve the amendment. Rather, the senators would just make up 24 votes in a 341-member assembly, made up of the 24 senators and 317 members of the House of Representatives.
The second plot was the unprecedented conversion of four committees of the House of Representatives into a kangaroo court and a propaganda machine rolled into one. It was intended to “convict” — in the eyes of the public — former president Rodrigo Duterte as a “mass murderer” because of his war on drugs and his daughter Sara as having malversed funds allocated to her. The quad comm’s aim was to demonize the Dutertes so much that Sara would become unpopular enough to lose her charisma and be thrown out of the 2028 presidential race.
That plot miserably failed when, after a month of almost daily hearings, most lasting until late evening, the quad comm couldn’t come up with evidence to prove the Dutertes were lying since, after all, their witnesses were mostly criminals themselves who would lie just to get out of their jail pens or evade being jailed. Worse, the Dutertes in the Senate and House committees proved to be eloquent in debunking the allegations against them, thereby even improving their support and charisma with the masses.
The burying of the impeachment complaint is the third plot by the Marcos-Romualdez duo to prevent Sara from being president either at any time if Marcos were disabled or in the elections in 2028.
Hatred
Filipinos’ hatred toward Marcos has risen because of these frenzied plots to continue in power after Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has to legally step down in 2028. Rather than strengthening a fast-weakening economy, they concentrated on their shameless efforts to continue in power by hook or by crook, no doubt inspired by Ferdinand’s father’s 13 years of authoritarian rule.
Why such a rush? Is it because the clan — particularly Romualdez — fears Marcos’ health may be failing as he has just one kidney having donated the other to his sick father 41 years ago?
Marcos’ son, Ilocos Norte Rep. Alexander “Sandro” Marcos — this early already being groomed as a President Marcos III — was the first to sign the impeachment complaint. That was so symbolic of his clan’s undying thirst for power.
Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao
Twitter: @bobitiglao
Archives: www.rigobertotiglao.com
Book orders: www.rigobertotiglao.com/shop
The post Dumbest impeachment try ends in a whimper first appeared on Rigoberto Tiglao.
Dumbest impeachment try ends in a whimper
Source: Breaking News PH
No comments: