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Arroyo allies to opposition: Let GMA finish term

By Gerry Baldo

11/16/2007

The reason the Palace allies in Congress continuously kill any and all impeachment complaints lodged against President Arroyo, even when the complaints are valid and substantial, has finally surfaced: they want her to finish her term and protect her from making herself accountable to the public.

Allies of Mrs. Arroyo in the House of Represen-tatives yesterday asked the political opposition to allow her to finish her term until 2010 instead of impeaching her.

Three years and three attempts after the opposition tried and failed to impeach Mrs. Arroyo, her allies in the House told the opposition to forget impeachment as there is no better way to change the President than through an election.

This, even as it was pointed out that the constitutional process of impeachment is a means to make an impeachable officer, such as the President, account publicly for her constitutional offenses, not because the opposition wants a change of leaders.

But Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman and Davao City Rep. Prospero Nograles said critics of Mrs. Arroyo should wait for the presidential elections in 2010 as this would be their chance to vote for their various presidential candidates.

Lagman, now vice chairman of the House committee on justice, urged the opposition to stay calm even as he said that pro-impeachment groups have already been given a chance to present their side which complaint did not meet the requirements of the impeachment process.

“They (members of the opposition) have been given all the opportunities to present their side. Now is

the right time to work together and for them to respect the mandate of this government until 2010,” Lagman said yesterday.

The justice committee, which is dominated by the allies of Mrs. Arroyo, blocked all legitimate moves of the opposition, or the minority bloc, to strengthen the impeachment complaint—seen to have been bogus and directed by Malacañang to inoculate her from an impeachment for one year—by junking the substantial supplemental complaint submitted by United Opposition spokesman lawyer Adel Tamano.

The justice committee, headed by Rep. Matias Defensor, a staunch presidential ally, then had the Ruel Pulido complaint junked on grounds that the complaint was lacking in substance.

Lagman and Nograles called on the opposition to join the administration in pushing reforms in government.

“Let us put an end to this divisive issue. The complaint is dead because it has no substantial value.”

Nograles said that now is the opportune time for the administration and the opposition to work together and allow the country to move toward the new millennium.

“Yes they (critics of President Arroyo) should wait two more years and just prepare for the next elections so we can all move forward,” Nograles said.

But an administration lawmaker, reached by the Tribune yesterday who was asked to comment on the call of the two administration congressmen to the opposition to drop the impeachment moves and wait for the 2010 polls to change the leaders, said that these congressmen (Lagman and Nograles) may have realized that they have yet to tackle another impeachment complaint in 2008.

“By that time, it may be more difficult for them to just kill the impeachment complaint against GMA, especially if her popularity ratings continue to fall. It will be too near the elections, and it will be the people who will go against them,” the congressional source, who asked not to be identified, said in Filipino.

The House committee on justice by a vote of 43 to one on Wednesday dismissed the impeachment complaint filed by Pulido against Mrs. Arroyo due to “insufficiency in substance.”

During the hearing Lagman pointed out that the complaint, which was endorsed by Laguna Rep. Edgar San Luis, was junked on the ground that it alleged wrongdoing of the President based on mere hearsay.

On Oct. 5, Pulido filed the complaint before the House secretary general alleging that Mrs. Arroyo betrayed public trust when she failed to stop the graft-tainted national broadband deal despite her knowledge of the incidents surrounding the deal US$329 million deal with the Zhong Xing Telecommunications (ZTE) Corp. of China.