MANILA — Allies of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo rejected the strongest two of three impeachment complaints against her yesterday, delivering another blow to flagging opposition attempts to unseat her.
The opposition, which walked out of the impeachment hearing yesterday complaining the process was being railroaded, made a last-ditch appeal for the extra six votes it says it needs to impeach Arroyo over allegations of electoral fraud and graft.
Mindoro Rep. Edmund Reyes, the only pro-impeachment congressman to attend the committee hearing yesterday, said 73 lawmakers had agreed to vote against Arroyo and appealed for others to come forward to help them reach the needed 79.
“Is there no one else?” he asked. “Is there anyone else signing this for truth?”
“Just six more,” Reyes said in an emotional appeal, scanning the pro-Arroyo lawmakers for any takers. There were none.
He then walked out, leaving blank endorsement forms.
Reyes explained that he and his colleagues had withdrawn from the committee proceedings because Arroyo’s allies had denied “our simple request” to consolidate three impeachment complaints against the president.
“All that the pro-impeachment group had been asking is the chance to uncover evidence to allow us to make a fair and just resolution of this simple question: Did the president lie, cheat and steal?” said Reyes.
Lawmakers have said that the majority had planned to junk the impeachment move before Arroyo leaves for abroad in mid-September for a United Nations summit in New York. The majority was prevented from doing so when the committee pushed ahead to settle issues blocking the squashing of the case against Arroyo.
Reyes said that yesterday, “our worst fears started to unfold.”
“Before we push our people to the wall and leave them with no alternative, I ask you to consolidate all the complaints. Consider the form and substance in this single proceeding and allow the evidence to be brought out and examined, so that a just resolution on these issues can be made,” he said.
Numbers Game
With the opposition members of the Justice Committee staying out, Arroyo’s allies endorsed the weakest of three impeachment complaints against her yesterday, and began debates on the case before killing it.
Voting 50-4 with one abstention, the justice committee ruled at that only the Lozano complaint — the weakest among the three but the first to be filed (June 27) — had complied with the constitutional requirement and jurisprudence governing impeachment proceedings.
Administration Representatives Teodoro Locsin (Makati), Antonino Roman (Bataan), Laurence Wacnang (Kalinga) and Jesus Crispin Remulla (Cavite) voted against, while Northern Samar Rep. Romualdo Vicencio abstained.
Two-and-a-half hours after junking the amended complaint, the justice committee voted 46 in favor (with one abstention, Makati Rep. Agapito “Butz” Aquino) to declare the Lozano complaint sufficient in form.
The committee said the complaint met the constitutional requirements that it should be properly verified and endorsed by a lawmaker.
In a final act last night, however, the committee voted 49-1 with two abstentions to trash the Lozano complaint for being “grossly” insufficient in substance.
The vote ended the impeachment proceedings at the committee, which will now submit a report to the plenary on Monday, according to the committee chairman, Maguindanao Rep. Simeon Datumanong.
“I’m very sorry, but this really is a numbers game,” said Datumanong, who represents the southern province of Maguindanao.
Low Credibility
But while Arroyo looks to have survived the worst crisis of her four-year presidency, analysts say she is unlikely to get much breathing space in the coming months from an embittered opposition and with lingering questions over her legitimacy.
Economic clouds are also gathering as record-high fuel prices make life harder for millions in the oil-importing country.
A survey by polling firm Pulse Asia released yesterday found that 67 percent of 1,200 people surveyed in July considered themselves worse off than a year ago, mainly due to high inflation. Only 12 percent thought their lives had improved.
During the voting by the committee, a number of activists, repeatedly yelling, “Impeach Gloria,” were dragged out of Congress by security guards.
As debates were raging, House security officials and riot police armed with truncheons and shields clashed with dozens of anti-government protesters outside Congress. At least one protester was seen being led away, blood oozing from a wound to the head. Another woman had a bruised eye.
A statement yesterday from pro-Arroyo lawmakers called the walkout a desperate, premeditated attempt to trigger street protests.
Popular televangelist Eddie Villanueva, a failed presidential candidate who watched the proceedings in Congress, urged the opposition to exhaust constitutional means of pressing the charges against Arroyo, but warned that people would have no recourse but to go to the streets if the charges were dismissed on a technicality.
“If they kill this — the fight of principled lawmakers — today or tomorrow, in front of God and history, it’s justified for the Filipino people ... they could not be stopped from going to the court of the streets,” Villanueva said.
The shortcomings of the Philippines’ rambunctious democracy have been on full display as tempers flare in Congress.
Administration lawmakers yesterday switched off their opponents’ microphones to shut them up and most of the opposition later stormed out in a paper-tossing tantrum.
The daughter of a former president, who has denied any wrongdoing, Arroyo appeared to be losing her presidency in early July after desertions by key allies, but has since marshaled her formidable political machinery to fight back successfully.
“I think the likelihood is that she will weather the storm on this,” said Mike Moran, regional economist at Standard Chartered in Hong Kong.
“It’s going to be quite difficult and a surprise if the opposition were able to actually take this to the next stage.” The peso fell as low as 56.30 to the dollar yesterday, close to its all-time low of 56.45. (Input from Inquirer News Service & Agencies)
