MANILA, Philippines - Necessity is the Mother of Invention. The House of Representatives discovered that its Secretary General suddenly had to fly to Switzerland when everyone’s favorite “presscon first, think later” lawyer Harry “Hairy” Roque typically—and indiscreetly—leaked to the press that a new impeachment complaint against the President would be filed.

The ruling coalition’s leadership not only swung into action, it once more tripped up its critics through a technicality. The appointment of the acting SecGen, on the other hand, won’t take effect until today. So the weekend, on which at least two of the possible expiration dates for the ban on impeachment fell, would come and go with no one on hand officially authorized to receive the impeachment complaints.

This gave time for opposition press conferences to be held, their weekend timing helping to defuse the impact of a new impeachment complaint. After all, the Palace and its henchmen in the House could then snicker that it was all noise and little substance. And like all propaganda, their snickering contained a kernel of truth. Immediately subscribing to the Palace’s strategy of bogging down its critics in a swamp of legalese, the Roque-minded legalists had purged the impeachment complaint of the two things that would have made it truly explosive in terms of public opinion.

There will be no taking the President to task for recklessly endangering public order and security, and the prospects of a just and lasting peace, in Mindanao by charging her with impeachable offenses due to her bumbling handling of the proposed BJE-MOA. And there will be no effort to determine if the President betrayed the public trust by means of her imprudent handing out of pardons.

Politics is addition, not just for the administration, but the opposition. Too many political parties and civil society groups opposed to the President have come out in favor of the President’s BJE proposal, to respond to public opinion by trying to impeach her for it. What she has failed to do, they have already committed to doing, if they ever gain power in the future. And too many in the opposition owe the President a debt of gratitude for the manner she has exercised her pardoning power to respond to public disgust over those pardons.

So it will be the same old charges—charges whose growing antiquity do not detract from their relevance or just cause—but which the Palace has successfully headed off many times before. Which means they may be oldies but goodies but, still, old news. While these charges, for the conscientious, at least, are still as valid and iron-clad as they were in years past, they represent no real political danger to the President.

So why does the Palace have to take an even more aggressive tack than before? Including the House pulling a Garci with its own SecGen?

It’s not because any oppositionists are still capable of causing trouble in the House, it’s that the administration coalition has grown too fat and greedy for the President’s own good. Allowing oppositionists to file an impeachment complaint not as radioactive as it could be, but still explosive enough to contain swine, Spratlys and ZTE-related charges, would provide administration congressmen with an excuse to go through an impeachment hearing in aid of presidential extortion.

This is a time of belt-tightening. It’s no coincidence that Romulo Neri, taking a cue from Miguel Zubiri, went crying to the media. He got shouted at by Bobby Ongpin and other big guns of Philex Mining; the reason being that the SSS was rumored to be interested in buying in, and essentially commanding, the mining firm when it was poised to consummate one with Manny Pangilinan. But the government has little choice to muscle in on private enterprise nowadays because, in a karmic kind of way, businesses that profited from tolerating the President are now tempting to a President whose sources of public funds are drying up.

Oil’s going down, less EVAT. Consumption is down, less EVAT and all the tolerated smuggling just kills local enterprise while piling up unsellable inventory. OFWs are feeling the pinch, their unemployed dependents are taking to petty crime. The foreign funding of the NPA is drying up due to a recession-struck Europe, which means, in turn, that the army will need money as the rebels engage in more brigandage leading to public demands on the PNP and AFP to protect the people.

As Abraham Lincoln once earthily observed, there’s too many piglets, and too few teats. The President has to start muscling in on big business, to farm out chairmanships and directorships to her friends—not every Sergio Apostol can be put out to pasture in an Aboitiz bank. The proposals to stitch together the investment funds of the GSIS and SSS is to finance what the Frankenstein-like grafting together of Lakas and Kampi represents: the only way to keep the ruling coalition of the living dead artificially alive.

So the President and her henchmen pushed forward the passage of the 2009 budget, so she can tell the usual parasites, forget impeachment, you already got your cut. All that’s left is to ensure that a new impeachment is so toothless that no one will take it seriously.

A pity because even if declawed, the current complaint is still a deserving one. Impeachment is not about determining legal guilt, it is about resolving questions of political fitness for staying in office. It resolves the question of legitimacy, a fundamental requirement for leadership and calling for sacrifice. Sacrifice legitimacy and you are left with brute force; the roar of empowered crowds replaced by the torture chamber where no one can hear your screams.