(UPDATE) THE House Committee on Justice on Wednesday dismissed the impeachment complaints filed against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., finding them insufficient in substance.
The same panel found the complaints sufficient in form on Monday.
For the first complaint, which was filed last Jan. 19 by lawyer Andre de Jesus, and endorsed by House Deputy Minority Leader and Pusong Pinoy Rep. Jernie Jett Nisay, 42 lawmakers voted to dismiss it, one voted to pass it, and three, from the Makabayan bloc, abstained.
Thirty-nine lawmakers found the second complaint, which was endorsed by the Makabayan bloc, to be insufficient in substance.
This complaint was filed on Jan. 26 by private persons including Bagong Alyansang Makabayan president Renato Reyes Jr. as well as former lawmakers Liza Maza, Teodoro Casiño and Neri Colmenares. The bloc that endorsed it is composed of Kabataan Rep. Renee Co, Gabriela Women’s Party Rep. Sarah Elago and ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio.
“We will be continuing our meeting on Monday, that is Feb. 9. That is for the purpose of the preparation of our committee report, which will be forwarded to the plenary subject to the approval of at least one-third of all the members of the House of Representatives,” Batangas 2nd District Rep. Gerville Luistro, the committee chairman, said in a press conference on Wednesday.
She expects a draft committee report ready by Monday.
“We should be mindful that the committee report can still be reversed by at least one-third of all the members of the House of Representatives,” Luistro said.
If the committee report is reversed in the plenary, the House Committee on Justice “will be constrained to come up with” articles of impeachment, she said.
“I cannot still say it’s dead because there’s still a proceeding that will happen in the plenary,” she said.
Bicol Saro Rep. Terry Ridon, a member of the committee, said in Filipino and English that “to be very clear, the process is not yet finished. So up until the plenary decides on the fate of the impeachment against the president, this is not yet quite finished.” On Tuesday, the committee deliberated on the sufficiency in substance of the impeachment complaint filed on Jan. 19.
This complaint was filed for, among others, “surrendering” former president Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Mamamayang Liberal Rep. Leila de Lima, a former senator and former secretary of the Department of Justice, said the “sub-allegation” that Marcos had surrendered Duterte to a foreign tribunal was “a legal conclusion and not an allegation of fact.”
“Even if this is to be treated as a factual allegation, the complaint must still allege the specific acts that constitute the ‘surrender’ of [Duterte] to a foreign tribunal. Complaint cannot rely on judicial notice to establish the specific acts that constitute ‘surrender’ to a foreign tribunal which is in fact also debatable especially in light of alternative versions that [Duterte] was not surrendered but arrested by virtue of an ICC warrant in accordance with RA (Republic Act) 9851,” de Lima said, referring to the Philippine law against crimes against humanity.
On Wednesday, the committee deliberated on the sufficiency in substance of the complaint filed on Jan. 26.
“Having an imperfect policy direction is not an impeachable offense,” San Juan Rep. Ysabel Zamora, a vice chairman of the committee, said.
Those who filed the second complaint alleged that the president “betrayed public trust by institutionalizing a systematic scheme of corruption through the adoption and implementation of the so-called Baselined-Balanced-Managed Parametric Formula (BBM Parametric Formula) as the official allocation mechanism for flood control and other infrastructure projects.”
Moving forward
A Palace official said the president wants to move on and focus on other matters, particularly improving the economy of the country, after the House Committee on Justice dismissed the two impeachment cases filed against him.
“First of all, we are glad that the process was followed, and we are thankful that the legislators saw what the truth really is. We are always after the truth. We have seen that the said complaints have no merit. Even the president said he is confident that he has not committed any impeachable offense,” Presidential Communications Office Claire Castro told Palace reporters. She said Marcos was in a private meeting when he was informed of the development.
“Right now, the president is focused on lifting the country’s economy. So, he said, ‘let’s move forward,’” she added.
Castro shot down speculation that the chief executive’s confidence was based on the influence of two of his biggest allies in the House of Representatives, Speaker Faustino Dy III and his son, Majority Leader Sandro Marcos.
“That is not true because even others who are not really supporters of the president said that the complaints are really weak and have no merit,” she said.
She added that the president was not privy to the workings of the House Committee on Justice, and did not have control over it.