THE ELABORATE hand-wringing in the House of Representatives by political allies of Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, over the alleged politicization of the impeachment process and the supposed rush to judgment against Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, is not unexpected. All the same, it is deeply offensive to Filipinos who remember how the very same politicians, then in the majority, politicized the impeachment process in 2005 and in succeeding years, in a rush to defend then President Arroyo.
In other words, the hand-wringing, or in the case of Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, he of “prejudicial questions” notoriety, the resort to fustian rhetoric, is an exercise in hypocrisy.
Essentially, in 2005 (and again in 2006 and 2007), the pro-Arroyo coalition in the House conducted itself according to the political theory of impeachment: In the end, the process is only a numbers game. If a pattern of markedly weak, designed-to-fail first impeachment complaints happened to characterize the process, what of it? The majority voted to privilege these defective complaints over other, stronger cases anyway. If the Constitution allows impeachment complaints to be consolidated into one impeachment proceeding (the substance of the recent Supreme Court decisions rejecting Gutierrez’s petition to stop the impeachment process), what of it? The majority in the time of Arroyo voted against consolidation anyway. If the majority at the time gamed the system against the opposition, taunting it to make its case in the proper forum and then in the next breath denying it that very forum, what of it? The majority voted anyway—and in their view, that did not only make their conduct legal, that made it right.
One quick example to refresh the memory: In 2005, Maguindanao Rep. Simeon Datumanong, then chair of the House committee on justice, gave an interview while deliberations were ongoing in which he declared that the “Hello, Garci” tapes, the controversial recording of alleged conversations between Arroyo and Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, were inadmissible evidence in the impeachment process. Because of this and other statements, the opposition asked Datumanong to inhibit himself, saying he had clearly prejudged the case against Arroyo, in whose Cabinet he had previously served. Datumanong refused, arguing he was impartial enough to preside over the committee’s work objectively.
Thanks to voter outrage in last year’s elections, the political shoe is on the other foot. Arroyo’s allies in the House—and taking her cue from them, Gutierrez herself—now allege partisanship or worse motives to committee chair Niel Tupas Jr. and other members of the majority in the committee.
At least Lagman is intellectually honest enough to recognize that the Aquino administration and many (though not all) of its allies in Congress ran last year on an anti-corruption campaign. As the justice committee weighed probable cause in the case against Gutierrez the other day, Lagman intoned: “The critical imperativeness of due process must not be sacrificed to imprudent haste or partisan importuning. Impeachment of a respondent at all costs is not the raison d’être for redeeming a campaign promise.”
This is fancy talk, but it is really nothing more than political hypocrisy twice over.
In the first place, “imprudent haste or partisan importuning” best characterizes the conduct of the Arroyo majority in 2005 to 2007, when it ran roughshod over the impeachment process in order to protect her. Who is Lagman, whose set of prejudicial questions successfully raised Palace objectives over public interest, to complain about the flexing of political muscle? Secondly, the Tupas committee has handled the Gutierrez cases with far greater attention to the quasi-judicial responsibilities of Congress than the Arroyo majority in 2005 to 2007 ever did.
Impeachment, that “terrible sword” of constitutional law, is both a political and a quasi-judicial process. It is political because it is a responsibility entrusted to a political branch of government; it is quasi-judicial (that is to say, it follows legal procedures) because it is based on rules of court, of procedure, of evidence. The impeachment of Merceditas Gutierrez, while indisputably a political act, has followed stringent legal standards—which is more than what we can say for the impeachment cases Lagman et al. handled with murderous efficiency.