Moro-moro

FRONTLINE

Ninez Cacho-Olivares

11/16/2007

From the day lawyer Ruel Pulido filed his impeachment complaint against Gloria Arroyo and on the same day had Laguna Rep. Edgar San Luis endorse it, they both knew this would be quickly killed by the House. Still, that was the intent all along, since clearly, it was a bogus complaint, meant to inoculate Gloria from any removal by impeachment for one more year.

Despite their claims of this complaint being a genuine and serious one, it is more than evident that this was planned along to protect Gloria, because if Pulido really were serious in getting Gloria impeached, as a means for San Luis to know the truth, as they continue to claim, why did they move too fast in filing and endorsing the bid? Both know that at least 80 signatures are needed to get an impeachment going. While they may not have been able to garner this number, their claim of the bid not being bogus would have been more credible if they had, at the very least, discussed this with the minority members in the House, and come up with a more substantial, well-discussed, well-crafted complaint. Time, after all, was not of the essence in this instance. There was as yet no move on the part of the minority to lodge an impeachment complaint, since the opposition bloc was still waiting for the outcome of the ZTE-National Broadband Network scam Senate hearings, where more developments were expected to unfold. For what purpose then was the big rush to be the first to file an impeachment complaint?

After the complaint was dismissed by the House justice committee, both Pulido and San Luis expressed feigned dismay, with even the congressman claiming that he did not expect this move by the justice committee to be that fast.

Just who does he think he is kidding? This isn’t the first time an impeachment complaint was instantly killed by the allies of Gloria in the committee level. It’s been going on for the past three years. San Luis certainly knew, even before he affixed his signature on the Pulido complaint, that it would be over even before any argument can be made.

He has endorsed a complaint, and he does not know the history in the House in the matter of impeachment complaints against Gloria? Hello. Filipinos aren’t idiots to swallow that line.

As for his claim of knowing the truth through an impeachment complaint, this, too, is too crappy a reason. With the majority in the House filled with Gloria’s allies (and she can count, too, on San Luis as an ally), surely the Pulido endorser knew that an impeachment complaint, rushed as it was and clearly so bogus in form and substance, was not the venue in the search for truth. A House panel probe would have been the more proper venue, where congressmen would not be able to kill, through a vote, questions posed by members of the minority bloc.

As for Pulido, even his expression of dismay was as bogus as his impeachment complaint. Pulido is not one of the dum-dum lawyers. He certainly would not have come up with that impeachment complaint that was 80 percent aimed against Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., and just come up with a general statement of a betrayal of public trust.

If that was all he did for his other clients, that would be a sure way for him to make all his clients lose their cases.

Pulido also knew, without any doubt, just how the majority in the House would treat his impeachment complaint. All that talk of his about their being afraid to argue was nothing but crap.

He certainly knew just how the allies of Gloria, who are in the majority in the House, would kill that impeachment complaint — just as Pulido knew when he first filed the complaint, just how easily his complaint would be killed — as intended from the start.

Deny it or not, the Pulido complaint followed the same steps taken by Oliver Lozano in 2005: rushing the bid, having one congressman endorse it, then when exposed as bogus, agreed to support an amended complaint by the opposition, after which, when the numbers were getting too hot under Gloria’s collar, Lozano suddenly threatened to withdraw from the amended complaint.

Still, that wasn’t the first time Lozano inoculated Gloria. He did the same in 2000, when she was Vice President, to ensure that Gloria does not get impeached while Estrada was still in Malacañang.

Pulido and San Luis went through it the same way: saying yes to a supplemental complaint yet knowing that this would be junked anyway.

Pulido and San Luis, like Lozano and former Rep. Rodante Marcoleta, are now in the same boat.

Their credibility is so shot, no matter how much and how often they defend themselves.

To the Filipino people, they are baggage as they clearly sold out to Gloria.

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