We limit impeachable offenses to culpable violation of the Constitution, treason, bribery, graft and corruption, and other high crimes, or betrayal of the public trust.

Indulge us as we attempt to do the unthinkable where we might be so brazenly bold and presumptuous so as to rise from colonial ignorance in an attempt to educate in basic law and government those who had brought democracy to our shores and taught us, we, their little brown protectorates won as spoils from the Spanish-American War of 1898, what it is that founds the democracy that parented ours.

In the United States (US) House of Representatives, in the Judiciary panel’s decision to craft the articles of impeachment to remove their president from office, one of two articles they decided to charge him with is “Obstruction of Congress.”

Analysts have described the bases for impeachment among the flimsiest ever brought against a US president. Here’s why.

First, the basis for the charge of obstruction are requests and demands for specific documentation from the White House during the inquiry stage conducted by the House Committee on Intelligence, the panel similarly convened to take on the impeachment issue.

What “obstruction” is being charged as an impeachable offense had occurred after the Intelligence Committee had convened. Simply put, the House first decided to impeach, and then when they realized they had nothing to go on. In asking for evidence, it was only then that they found the basis they sorely needed. Never mind the White House’s invocations of executive privilege.

While the absurdity of that is based on results in search of reasons there is another ridiculous quality of this particular article of impeachment. In the past three Philippine presidencies, we’ve seen several episodes in Congress where either House or Senate committees clashed with Malacañang on the matter of executive privilege and both subpoena ad testificandum and subpoena duces tecum.

In each of these clashes, the impeachment of the president was never raised because the venue for compelling both documents and testimony protected by executive privilege is the courts. This seems to have been forgotten by the Democrats ruling the US House Judiciary panel in their rush to craft an article of impeachment they can hurl at the American president.

Let’s explain it in plain English so the Americans can understand. Congress crafts laws. The Executive branch executes those laws. Any dispute between the two is resolved by the third branch, the judiciary. Impeachment is not the first recourse.

That’s the way it works in the Philippines. And that’s a basic lesson the US House Judiciary committee should learn when they decided that “Obstruction of Congress” was an impeachable offense. It just isn’t.

Rather than bribery or extortion that the Committee on Intelligence focused on, the second article of impeachment was for “Abuse of Power” however broad such term might be. As it is, “Abuse of Power” is basically an empty basket to be later filled with a potpourri of various dead and dry brickbats. So far they haven’t included one impeachable crime.

Article II, section 4 of the US Constitution limits impeachable offenses to treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. Beyond these Congress included improperly abusing powers, improper behavior, and misuse of the office for an improper use as impeachable. Misused these dangerously establish a partisanship factor. Thus they’ve unsuccessfully impeached lower factotum for drunkenness, haranguing behavior and sexual assault.

Filipinos have written our impeachment provisions several times better. We limit impeachable offenses to culpable violation of the Constitution, treason, bribery, graft and corruption, and other high crimes, or betrayal of the public trust. Under two other constitutions we had, both the 1935 and 1973 version, betrayal of the public trust was not an impeachable offense.

Given that House-born recklessness will not succeed as the final verdict depends on a Republican-dominated Senate that adjudicates, the Democrat’s desperate and scorched earth ploy has become too obvious to the electorate. Vexation prior to the 2020 polls and vendetta for their 2016 loss.