Marcos has weaponized impeachment and criminal law

THE impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte has nothing to do with accountability. It is the weaponization of impeachment, one of the democracy’s crucial constitutional institutions, into a vile means of preventing a popular leader from being elected president in 2028. It is a grotesque reversal of the Constitution’s framers’ intent to institutionalize a means of checking abuse of the highest officials.

Worse, such weaponization is also being undertaken in the very process of the impeachment: The use of the state’s coercive machinery of the state is being brought to bear on the very institution, the Senate, as the impeachment court, that must sit in judgment of Duterte.

The National Bureau of Investigation, the prosecutors, and now even the constitutionally independent Office of the Ombudsman are moving, in uncanny sequence, against senators who are likely to acquit Sara.

Senators Rodante Marcoleta and Jinggoy Estrada have been charged and thrown in jail without recourse to bail. The Marcos regime also has chosen to enforce an arrest warrant issued by a foreign court — which is a rejection of our country’s sovereigny — that has forced Sen. Bato de la Rosa to rightfully evade this injustice. Now the public is being told of cases or impending action involving Senators Mark Villar, Camille Villar, Loren Legarda and even Robin Padilla. This regime has weaponized criminal law to change the composition and temper of an impeachment court.

Even the dates emphasize this incontrovertible turn. The allegation against Marcoleta concerns campaign financing allegedly received back in 2022. The PrimeWater water-district issue involving the Villars traces way back to agreements and events in 2018. Neither matter arose yesterday, and no public explanation has been given for why coercive action against senators whose votes matter in the impeachment court had to be pressed now, rather than after that court had finished its work.

Yet prosecution spokesperson Rep. Robert Ace Barbers thinks Filipinos are stupid by claiming that these events happened during the same period only “by coincidence.” Is it another coincidence that, on top of the three senators prevented from participating in the trial, there are four more that the Marcos government is planning to jail at this time, in the midst of the trial? Actor Edu Manzano perfectly expressed in Filipino the kind of minion Barbers and many who don’t see that the impeachment is an abominable plot to take out Sara: “May bayad o may sayad.” Paid for, or insane.

I would add that description to those who believe that puny politicians like Gerville Luistro and Terry Ridon conspired with senators like the three Liberals, the two Tulfos, Vicente Sotto and Panfilo Lacson to undertrake for the sake of upholding accountability for this impeachment project, and not for Marcos.

Is it another coincidence that the Marcos senators have mounted a full-court press to illegally amend the Constitution so that a lesser number than 16, based on the number of senators present in the voting and not on all sitting senators, would be enough to convict Sara?

If the Marcos camp succeeds in tampering with the Constitution’s provision on this voting threshold, that this is based on the number of incumbent senators and not just the ones present in the trial, and with the first three senators (Estrada, Marcoleta and de la Rosa) excluded from the voting, there would only be 21 senators present, and only 14 (2/3 of 21) will be needed to convict Sara. With the Marcos camp numbering 13, just P1 billion or even two, or just a yet-to-be unreleased document for a criminal charge, would be enough to get a 14th vote.

Scrimp

To make doubly sure — or scrimp on costs — Marcos would have Legarda and the two Villars jailed, which therefore reduces the number of voting senators to 18, and only twelve needed to take out Sara, one less than the ignominious 13 Marcos seems to hold by the balls.

Former Associate Justice Adolf Azcuna was a member of the Constitutional Commission and it was he who drafted the text of the Constitution’s Article IX, Section 3 (6) that stipulated that two-thirds of all members of the Senate are required to convict an impeached official. He told the impeachment court that it was crystal clear to the framers that two-thirds of all members and not just of “members present” (as in the US Constitution) are required. He described the provision not as a mere technicality, but a “deliberate constitutional design” intended to set a high and broad threshold for the removal of a high-ranking elected official.

He further emphasized that changing the voting denominator based on attendance would expose the process to easy manipulation and political sabotage. I think Azcuna was referring to the “manipulation” this regime intends to do.

The Marcos agents are intending not only the incapacitation of senators so they can’t vote in the impeachment trial. The Justice Department and the ombudsman’s announcements are warning messages that tell every senator: If you do not cooperate with Marcos, your past will be excavated; your life can be upended before you have cast it. As the popular Filipino saying puts it:“Hahanapan ka namin ng butas.” (Loosely translated: “We will find an excuse to charge you.”)

A senator need not be convicted, or even charged, for that message to do its work. Fear thrives on uncertainty.

P150 million

President Aquino III bribed senators with P100 to P150 million in pork-barrel-type funds (in the guise of the so-called Disbursement Acceleration Program funds) to get them to vote the late Chief Justice Renato Corona guilty on the flimsy charge of not including this family’s dollar accounts in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth.

Marcos is being parsimonious like a true Ilocano and like his strongman father by just threatening to throw uncooperative senators in jail or incapacitate them. Marcoleta, Estrada and de la Rosa are the examples.

There is a further democratic injury when detained senator-judges are excluded from the tribunal. Former Associate Justice Azcuna made the essential point that senators who have been jailed should be allowed to attend the impeachment proceedings, even providing them with the transcripts or even videos of the trial. His argument is that impeachment is a key constitutional institution, and the people did not elect 24 senators only for the state to determine, at a critical moment, which of them may exercise their mandate. Courts can make practical arrangements for secure attendance. The difficulty is not logistical; it is whether the state respects the constitutional role at stake.

Indeed, when an agency moves against a senator-judge during the trial, it must be able to show not only probable cause but also compelling, non-political reasons why the action could not wait and why less disruptive lawful measures would not suffice.

That burden should be high because the danger is high. A president who can determine who the senator-judges are in a trial involving his principal political rival has acquired a power the Constitution never gave him. He may not hold the gavel, but he can shape who sits within reach of it.

Arresting

The issue of arresting and threatening senator-judges during an impeachment trial is larger than Sara. If this Senate can be bludgeoned into convicting one high official, it may be similarly bludgeoned in future impeachments, making this solemn constitutional process against abuses by high officials an instrument of the president, who is ironically the prime “target” of the impeachment process. If agencies can be synchronized to frighten senator-judges today, a future president will use the same playbook.

We Filipinos must stop pretending that we do not see what is before us. The danger is not only that a political opponent may be convicted. The danger is that a constitutional tribunal may be taught that its members are safe only when they vote according to the president’s wishes. That is the depraved use of justice’s name to make fear govern the Senate.

I totally agree with the Facebook post of one John Phil, who, although largely unknown, has 27,000 followers: “Marcoleta and Estrada are already in jail; Robin and Loren have cases; ICC warrants are hanging over Bato and Bong Go; and a case is waiting for Cayetano. If you cannot see the abuse, you are complicit in it.” (Translated from Filipino.)

---

Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao

X: @bobitiglao

Website: www.rigobertotiglao.com

The post Marcos has weaponized impeachment and criminal law first appeared on Rigoberto Tiglao.

Marcos has weaponized impeachment and criminal law
Source: Breaking News PH