What impeachment complaint?
HOW can it be a real impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte when the 215 members of what is really the House of Political Prostitutes were bribed by Speaker Martin Romualdez, with their districts given P150 million each in the form of dole-outs for their constituents and small infrastructure projects vulnerable to corruption?
Not only that, those who initially resisted were told that if they did not sign the complaint, the ruling clique would fund by various means their rivals in the coming May elections.
The fact that the 215 congressmen were bribed has been attested to by Navotas representative Toby Tiangco, the administration’s campaign manager in the May elections. Cebu 5th District and Deputy Speaker Duke Frasco explained why he had to accept Romualdez’s offer in a videotape posted on his website.* More than a dozen congressmen have told media how they were forced to sign the complaint, although they begged not to be named for fear of retaliation.
It is physically (and mentally) impossible for each of the 215 congressmen in the two hours that the impeachment complaint was circulated could have read the articles of impeachment, as required by the House’s rules of impeachment.
WTF, it was an open secret in Congress and in the political class that the congressmen had been bribed. In fact, not one of them — not even Romualdez himself, the alleged briber — has denied this allegation.
Even in ordinary criminal complaints — something the communists have learned to take advantage of — testimony and confessions against an accused, if done under duress, torture, or bribery, are thrown to the wastebasket for being a “fruit of the poisoned tree.” The impeachment complaint against the vice president was generated out of bribery, and therefore should be thrown to the rubbish bin.
Those crying out for Sara Duterte’s impeachment, especially the likes of Christian Monsod, who claim the Senate is violating the Constitution by remanding the complaint back to the House, have not explained why they think there is a valid impeachment complaint when the representatives were bribed — and even threatened that their electoral rivals would instead be funded by the administration — to collaborate with the plot to politically assassinate Sara Duterte.
Test
“A test of the Senate’s integrity,” writes the Palace apologist shamelessly imbedded in this newspaper. Indeed it has been a test not just of integrity but of intelligence that the 18 senators remanded the complaint and asked the Congress to verify if it is valid.
In essence, the impeachment process is not really a check and balance against high-ranking officials. It is simply a mechanism by the ruling administration to remove an unwanted official, clothed in legalese.
It is so scandalous, as one Sara media assassin described it, that “People from nearly all sectors — the urban poor, the rural folk, labor, the professions, the academe, the Church, the NGOs — are mobilizing, preparing to do battle [with the Senate].” Doesn’t he see that the warm bodies demonstrating in the streets are almost all activists of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its cousin organization, Akbayan?
Almost all “impeach Sara” placards are signed by the communist labor organization Kilusang Mayo Uno or by Bayan Muna, as if to provide proof to their financiers that they are doing the jobs they’ve been paid to do. These “people from all sectors” are in fact the same mob that has supported the Aquino III project to remove the late Chief Justice Renato Corona and launched protests against President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration, especially his very successful campaign to prevent the country from becoming a narco-state.
“The plenary is not supreme, the Constitution is; and ultimately, the sovereign is — the people,” incoming senator Tito Sotto pontificated in criticizing 18 of his colleagues’ decision. Of course, Sotto thinks he is the spokesman of the People.
The Senate may be simply giving the House some courtesy when it remanded the complaint to verify that it didn’t violate the one-impeachment-complaint-per-year rule. What happens if, during the trial, some senator demands that representatives Tiangco and Frasco and other congressmen testify on their allegations that the congressmen had been bribed?
Ruling
This impeachment brouhaha is another testament to Marx and Engels’ insight in The German Ideology — “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” — even in its “micro form”: This frenzy against Sara, for her to be impeached, is merely the project, the plot of the Marcos-Romualdez clan to remain in power in 2028 and beyond. No one else has the popularity to stop that power-hungry clan.
The dialectic, though, is that in this case, the ideas of the “noisy, thinking class” as well as the elite are so different from that of the masses. Social Weather Stations and OCTA Research announced essentially fake flaws to create an impression that the majority of Filipinos want Sara impeached, which I debunked incontrovertibly. The fact of Sara’s continuing popularity, with her rating at 59 percent in April, shows that these impeachment charges haven’t stuck.
Impeachments here and in the US have proved to be travesties of democracy. The two impeachment cases in the US that were completed — against Bill Clinton and Donald Trump — proved to be useless, as the Senate impeachment court at the end of the day simply voted along party lines to acquit.
The impeachment of President Estrada was actually planned by Ramos, his generals and the emerging Yellow forces to lead to a “People Power 2.” Estrada, however, proved that this was not the masses’ will, as his wife, Loi, got elected to the Senate in elections four months after his fall, while his two sons became senators in succeeding years. While Corona was convicted, the public sentiment was that Aquino III simply ordered it in order for his Hacienda Luisita-owning clan to be paid P3 billion for it to be put under land reform, instead of the P150 million that the Supreme Court had ordered. Unchallenged were the revelations that the senators who lynched Corona were given P150 million each for their chosen infrastructure projects, disguised as part of the Aquino III government’s so-called “Disbursement Acceleration Plan.”
The big flaw in our impeachment process, as so glaringly shown in Sara’s case, is that the House Speaker — because of his total control of benefits that could be given to congressman beyond their salaries — can order them to file an impeachment complaint. The speaker is in reality designated to undertake such a project by the president because he has huge financial and non-financial resources (such as appointing over 3,000 officials) to allocate to congressmen who do his bidding.
At the end of the day, impeachment is merely the ruling clique’s mechanism for ousting an unwanted official, in this case the shoo-in for the 2028 presidential elections, whether or not the masses want it.
*Transcript of Frasco’s speech posted on his Facebook page, can be viewed at https://ift.tt/QGexmiU Frasco said (translated from Cebuano):
“The number one reason I signed the impeachment complaint is because of our programs, projects and developments here in my district. I want to ensure our programs and projects here continue. Heaven forbid, but what if all of them are stopped? The programs and projects will not continue. If I do not side with the majority in Congress, some projects might not receive support. Where will my projects go? Will I still be able to provide assistance to our fishermen? There are 16 scholars in my district, 16 scholars who are hoping to receive support from the government so they can finish their education. Support for solo parents, persons with disabilities, vendors, drivers, barangay security officers. University projects for all, the Liloan hospital, the government center, and the airport.”
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What impeachment complaint?
Source: Breaking News PH
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