I AM not a lawyer. I have not had any legal training or education in my life. God only endowed me with a functioning brain so I am going to use it.
Calling the impeachment of impeachable officials under our 1987 Constitution as a political process is the greatest budol, or scam, of our country’s history. I am nauseated by this statement in the University of the Philippines College of Law’s “impeachment primer”:
“Unlike traditional legal proceedings, impeachment is quintessentially political, with facts and law being weighed not by specially trained judges but by popularly elected members of Congress.”
No! A million times No!
Impeachment is a “judicial” process against impeachable officers for specific offenses identified by the 1987 Constitution as: 1) culpable violation of the Constitution; 2) treason; 3) bribery; 4) graft and corruption; 5) other high crimes; 6) betrayal of public trust.
The Constitution provides that an impeachable officer may be removed from office upon impeachment for, and later conviction of, the aforementioned offenses. Plain and simple to me, impeachment is a judicial process, not a political process. The political aspect of it only pertains to the background of those tasked by the Constitution to prosecute and render judgment on impeachment cases of impeachable officers, who in the words of the UP College of Law are not necessarily “specially trained judges” but “popularly elected members of Congress.” It means to me that a nonlawyer or anyone without any legal training or education as long as they are popularly elected members of Congress may participate in the impeachment process, either in terms of filing a complaint for impeachment (Article IX, Section 3.2), vote “to affirm a favorable resolution with the Articles of Impeachment of the Committee, or override its contrary resolution” (Article IX, Section 3.3) or in the case of sitting senators, try and decide the impeachment case (Article IX, Section 3.6).
However, the involvement of lay persons in various stages of the process does “not” give license to distort and bastardize the nature of impeachment as a “purely judicial process.” The process is “not political” and “can never be political” without a naked, willful and blatant violation of the Constitution.
Yes, I can say that with fortitude as a nonlawyer.
This is where — if my memory of past events is accurate — I think Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. did the entire country a huge disservice when he sat as presiding officer during the impeachment of President Joseph Estrada in 2001. In my understanding of the intent of the Constitution, the chief justice as presiding officer had the solitary task of ensuring that the proceedings maintained unflinching fidelity to judicial standards. The presiding officer had the responsibility to ensure that judicial matters in the process were not besmirched by a crude, sleazy and ill-informed vote of the senator-judges. For example, the chief magistrate as presiding officer was imbued with authority to decide the matter of opening (or not) the second envelope in the Estrada impeachment purely and solely based on judicial principles.
That was his role in the entire process. That is why he was there in the first place.
So many decisions were vulgarly made during the Estrada impeachment trial using the glaring partisanship of the senator-judges. Those decisions should have been made instead by the chief justice as presiding officer based on judicial merits to ensure the integrity of the impeachment as a judicial process.
The chief magistrate as presiding officer, in my view, wielded the unblemished authority to redirect the entire process away from the political tendencies of the senator-judges, and the prosecution and defense teams toward the true, straight and narrow path of the judicial process. If the chief justice as presiding had already ruled on a certain question by members of the prosecution or defense based on judicial merits, senator-judges should not have been — by the chief justice as presiding officer — allowed to twist that ruling in any shape or form. I recall — if memory serves — that circumventions like that happened a number of times in 2001.
In short, the proceedings should have mimicked an honest-to-goodness courtroom proceeding, not a circus just like what happened during the Estrada impeachment in 2001 and also during the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012 for that matter. The impeachment process needs to be enveloped by the integrity of a judicial proceeding, not degraded into a political spectacle as what happened in 2001 and 2012.
The prosecution team needs to advance a better judicial strategy than its lackluster performance during the Corona impeachment in 2012. Worse, the prosecution team’s incompetence should have never been coddled by the Senate-impeachment court for political or any nonjudicial reasons.
In the same manner, the Senate-impeachment court must not roadblock a proper prosecution strategy as what happened to the second envelope during the Estrada impeachment with the banality of superior voting numbers. It was the responsibility of presiding officer Chief Justice Davide to put everything in order to safeguard the judicial process from the despicability of the senator-judges and the Senate-impeachment court. However, Davide went with timidity rather than living up to his constitutional responsibility as the presiding officer, and we are all suffering the consequences of it right now.
The Senate-impeachment court needs to be more forthright toward an elegant defense — such as proffered during the Corona impeachment — and rule based on judicial merits alone, not on the partisan proclivities of senator-judges. The blasphemy of the Corona impeachment is only tempered by the glaring absence (in comparison to the Estrada impeachment) of a Supreme Court justice as presiding officer to ideally stamp judicial order in the proceedings.
In sum, to maintain our collective sanity, our country needs an impeachment process that is political only in terms of the composition of the prosecution and the Senate-impeachment court, but beyond that is nothing but a rigid judicial process through and through.
Otherwise — and we are seeing it now with the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte — the impeachment process is going to be more and more prostituted and debased with every case that is prosecuted.
No! A million times No!
Impeachment is a “judicial” process against impeachable officers for specific offenses identified by the 1987 Constitution as: 1) culpable violation of the Constitution; 2) treason; 3) bribery; 4) graft and corruption; 5) other high crimes; 6) betrayal of public trust.
The Constitution provides that an impeachable officer may be removed from office upon impeachment for, and later conviction of, the aforementioned offenses. Plain and simple to me, impeachment is a judicial process, not a political process. The political aspect of it only pertains to the background of those tasked by the Constitution to prosecute and render judgment on impeachment cases of impeachable officers, who in the words of the UP College of Law are not necessarily “specially trained judges” but “popularly elected members of Congress.” It means to me that a nonlawyer or anyone without any legal training or education as long as they are popularly elected members of Congress may participate in the impeachment process, either in terms of filing a complaint for impeachment (Article IX, Section 3.2), vote “to affirm a favorable resolution with the Articles of Impeachment of the Committee, or override its contrary resolution” (Article IX, Section 3.3) or in the case of sitting senators, try and decide the impeachment case (Article IX, Section 3.6).
However, the involvement of lay persons in various stages of the process does “not” give license to distort and bastardize the nature of impeachment as a “purely judicial process.” The process is “not political” and “can never be political” without a naked, willful and blatant violation of the Constitution.
Yes, I can say that with fortitude as a nonlawyer.
This is where — if my memory of past events is accurate — I think Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. did the entire country a huge disservice when he sat as presiding officer during the impeachment of President Joseph Estrada in 2001. In my understanding of the intent of the Constitution, the chief justice as presiding officer had the solitary task of ensuring that the proceedings maintained unflinching fidelity to judicial standards. The presiding officer had the responsibility to ensure that judicial matters in the process were not besmirched by a crude, sleazy and ill-informed vote of the senator-judges. For example, the chief magistrate as presiding officer was imbued with authority to decide the matter of opening (or not) the second envelope in the Estrada impeachment purely and solely based on judicial principles.
That was his role in the entire process. That is why he was there in the first place.
So many decisions were vulgarly made during the Estrada impeachment trial using the glaring partisanship of the senator-judges. Those decisions should have been made instead by the chief justice as presiding officer based on judicial merits to ensure the integrity of the impeachment as a judicial process.
The chief magistrate as presiding officer, in my view, wielded the unblemished authority to redirect the entire process away from the political tendencies of the senator-judges, and the prosecution and defense teams toward the true, straight and narrow path of the judicial process. If the chief justice as presiding had already ruled on a certain question by members of the prosecution or defense based on judicial merits, senator-judges should not have been — by the chief justice as presiding officer — allowed to twist that ruling in any shape or form. I recall — if memory serves — that circumventions like that happened a number of times in 2001.
In short, the proceedings should have mimicked an honest-to-goodness courtroom proceeding, not a circus just like what happened during the Estrada impeachment in 2001 and also during the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012 for that matter. The impeachment process needs to be enveloped by the integrity of a judicial proceeding, not degraded into a political spectacle as what happened in 2001 and 2012.
The prosecution team needs to advance a better judicial strategy than its lackluster performance during the Corona impeachment in 2012. Worse, the prosecution team’s incompetence should have never been coddled by the Senate-impeachment court for political or any nonjudicial reasons.
In the same manner, the Senate-impeachment court must not roadblock a proper prosecution strategy as what happened to the second envelope during the Estrada impeachment with the banality of superior voting numbers. It was the responsibility of presiding officer Chief Justice Davide to put everything in order to safeguard the judicial process from the despicability of the senator-judges and the Senate-impeachment court. However, Davide went with timidity rather than living up to his constitutional responsibility as the presiding officer, and we are all suffering the consequences of it right now.
The Senate-impeachment court needs to be more forthright toward an elegant defense — such as proffered during the Corona impeachment — and rule based on judicial merits alone, not on the partisan proclivities of senator-judges. The blasphemy of the Corona impeachment is only tempered by the glaring absence (in comparison to the Estrada impeachment) of a Supreme Court justice as presiding officer to ideally stamp judicial order in the proceedings.
In sum, to maintain our collective sanity, our country needs an impeachment process that is political only in terms of the composition of the prosecution and the Senate-impeachment court, but beyond that is nothing but a rigid judicial process through and through.
Otherwise — and we are seeing it now with the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte — the impeachment process is going to be more and more prostituted and debased with every case that is prosecuted.
