Impeachment vs Sara: An insane, inutile fixation
THE continuing, desperate move to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte would be comical if it were not such a serious misuse of one of the Constitution’s gravest instruments. Strip away the sanctimony, the press releases, the moral grandstanding, and what you are left with is a spectacle driven either by stupidity or by something far worse — cold, transactional opportunism masquerading as principle.
It is so shameful at this time, with the severe global repercussions of the US-Israel war against Iran creating very soon a socio-economic crisis here. Instead of burning the midnight oil to think up legislation or undertake projects in their districts to mitigate its impact on our countrymen, House members continue to waste taxpayers’ money in conspiring to get the vice president impeached. The only logical explanation for such an insane, inutile fixation is that they are getting compensation for this from the Marcos camp that sees — accurately — that a Sara presidency will be catastrophic for the clan.
There is only one fact that matters in impeachment, a fact so basic it should be engraved on every congressman’s desk. Under the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines, conviction requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate — 16 out of 24 votes. That means only nine senators are needed to acquit Sara.
Seven senators are sure to back Sara: Dante Marcoleta, Imee Marcos, Bong Go, Bato de la Rosa, Robin Padilla, and the two Cayetanos.
Go through the list of the following senators and it would be easy to conclude that at the very least, two of these would back Sara, so there would be a total of nine senators, enough to acquit her: the trio of Chiz Escudero, Jinggoy Estrada and Joel Villanueva, against whom the Marcos-appointed Ombudsman has disclosed he would be filing plunder charges again; Loren Legarda, whose congressman son Leandro has been hurling serious diatribes against the administration; Camille and Mark Villar of the family conglomerate, against whom the Securities and Exchange Commission has filed serious charges of corporate anomalies; the brothers Raffy and Erwin Tulfo, one of whom may be close to the first lady but who are just starting their political careers that could be derailed if they hitch their star to a hated administration; and Win Gatchalian, who has, for a controversial business tycoon’s son, surprisingly demonstrated a remarkable degree of fairness and level-headedness.
Only a few
Only a few, except for loyalist senators Vicente Sotto and Panfilo Lacson, would like to be associated with a corrupt loser, Marcos Jr. They’d naturally want to be associated with a winner, who at this point is Sara. There is also the fact that senators voting to convict Sara will be viewed by voters as conspirators trying to stop the people’s will — for Sara to become president in 2028, a near certainty since all surveys show her as having a commanding lead. They also know that the stink of the mega-corruption under the administration of Marcos has pervaded the land so that it would stick on senators voting to impeach Sara.
The emerging consensus is that only six will vote Sara guilty, far from the 16 required: Sotto, Lacson, Ejercito, and the Yellow senators — Bam Aquino, Risa Hontiveros, and Kiko Pangilinan. What a waste of the Senate’s time and resources.
The political horizon contest for the presidential elections in May 2028 is already appearing.
And after all, the charges against Sara are so flimsy, such as her use of her confidential funds, which the Commission on Audit has not found any irregularity, or her hyperbolic, theatrical threats against the president’s life.
Most importantly, former House speaker Martin Romualdez can no longer mobilize the hundreds of millions of pesos required to buy senators’ votes. His schemes to steal government funds have been exposed, and his prime mission now is how to evade jail, as he faces plunder charges.
This is the arithmetic that separates serious political actors from amateurs. You do not file an impeachment complaint just because you can. You file it because you can win. And winning, in this context, means securing 16 votes in a Senate that is structurally designed to make that outcome difficult. Everything else is theater.
Still, though, the leftists-turned-political mercenaries (aka the Makabayan bloc), the Pinks led by Rep. Leila de Lima (representing a dubious party-list “Mamamayang Liberal”) and the Marcos loyalists — led by Batangas Representatives Jinky Luistro and Jude Acidre, representing the party-list created and funded by the Romualdezes — are deluding themselves that they can still push through with their plot.
Recently, they thought they could do a repeat of the anomalous disclosure of the late Chief Justice Renato Corona’s bank accounts to find evidence of Sara’s alleged “unexplained wealth.” This is preposterous, a move termed a “fishing expedition,” legally frowned upon since it is a broad, speculative inquiry conducted in the hope of finding wrongdoing, rather than based on concrete evidence of it.
Atty. Vista
I’ll let a respected criminal lawyer Anthony Ludalvi Vista debunk this. He wrote on his Facebook account a succinct rebuttal of this injudicious move:
“Retired Supreme Court senior associate justice Antonio Carpio argues that the House of Representatives may compel the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) to disclose bank records as part of impeachment proceedings. His position rests on the House’s role as prosecutor and its power to issue subpoenas to determine probable cause.
“The issue is not whether the House can investigate. The issue is whether that power includes the authority to open bank accounts protected by law.
“A subpoena allows the House to compel testimony and the production of documents. But it does not automatically override laws that protect certain types of information. Bank deposits are governed by the Bank Secrecy Law and the Anti-Money Laundering Act. These are special laws that set strict conditions before bank records can be examined. A general subpoena power cannot simply set those protections aside.
“The AMLC operates under the Anti-Money Laundering Act, not under congressional instruction. As a general rule, before the AMLC can examine bank deposits, it must apply to the Court of Appeals and establish probable cause that the account is connected to unlawful activity or a money laundering offense. Only after the court makes that finding can a bank inquiry proceed.
“This requirement is a legal safeguard. It cannot be bypassed by a legislative subpoena.
Investigative
“The Bank Secrecy Law mentions an exception in cases of impeachment. But this does not mean Congress can open bank accounts at any stage.
“At the House level, the process is still investigative. The House determines whether there is probable cause to impeach. It does not conduct a trial. The Senate, when sitting as an impeachment court, performs a different function. It acts in an adjudicative capacity and is in a stronger position to compel evidence as part of a trial. The impeachment exception is tied to that context, not to ordinary investigative hearings.
“The House must gather evidence to perform its constitutional duty. But that duty must still be carried out within the framework of existing laws.
“The Constitution grants powers, but it does not automatically remove statutory safeguards without clear basis. The Anti-Money Laundering Act and bank secrecy laws remain in force unless properly set aside through lawful process.
“The House may issue subpoenas and conduct investigations. But it cannot compel the AMLC to open bank accounts in a manner that bypasses its governing law. Access to bank records still requires compliance with the Anti-Money Laundering Act, including judicial authorization in most cases, or a proper legal setting where the impeachment exception clearly applies.
“Subpoena power allows evidence gathering, but it does not convert protected bank deposits into freely accessible records.”
Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao
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Impeachment vs Sara: An insane, inutile fixation
Source: Breaking News PH
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