Dismissal of impeachment complaint lawful

Batas Mauricio

AS expected, there was no other way for the Committee on Justice of the House of Representatives but to order the dismissal–as it indeed ordered the dismissal on Monday–of the impeachment complaint that Magdalo Rep. Gary Alejano filed against President Duterte.

I have always maintained even just after its filing that the accusations in the complaint of Alejano were not of his own personal knowledge and therefore could not be the basis of even a mere investigation against the President.

To have agreed to entertain that impeachment complaint further despite its evidently hearsay nature would have made our congressmen fools and, what could have been worse, egregious violators of the Constitution and existing laws on what constitutes evidence that could trigger an investigation. The Committee on Justice therefore acted according to law in the dismissal of the Alejano complaint.

But, there is something more important than ordering the dismissal of the Alejano complaint, and it involves the mockery of the impeachment process and of the integrity of the House of Representatives as a whole by no less than a member of the chamber. I am of the opinion that the House must make Alejano answerable for the obvious perjury he committed, so no one else will dare imitate him.

I mean, even if Alejano is not a lawyer or is not trained in the legalities of an impeachment process, he should have known or he ought to have known at the very least by virtue of his lofty position that acting as a complainant in an impeachment proceeding requires the complainant to have personal knowledge of what he is accusing the President with.

Many members of the Committee on Justice were correct in pointing out that an impeachment complaint is not an ordinary complaint, especially because it is directed against the highest officer of the land. Prudence dictates that if anyone wanted to sue the President for impeachment, that someone should have personal knowledge of what he is talking about and, by his own admissions on Monday, Alejano did not have this personal knowledge.

This brings me back to what I wrote on March 17, 2017 in this column: “Impeaching President Duterte is an impossible mission at the moment, and… Alejano knew that. He was after all trained to always be discerning during his student days at the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) where he graduated in 1995. So, why did he do it–file the impeachment complaint, that is—against the incumbent President?

“Clearly, Alejano and Magdalo (whose founder is coup leader Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV) filed the complaint as part of a sinister and dark movement–which is to oust Duterte from power–obviously cooked up by Filipinos, civilians and military, who are used to rebelling and rising up against duly-constituted authorities to attain their selfish ends and purposes.

“In fact, it was not coincidental that as Alejano and Magdalo were filing their complaint against the President, Liberal Party Vice President Maria Leonora Robredo on the other hand was sending a video footage to the United Nations Commission on Drugs in Geneva, Switzerland, attacking Duterte on his fierce campaign against illegal drugs in the country. Their motives were all the same—to please foreign masters who are pulling their strings!”

E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com