Impeachment fever

It will soon be a year since the failed impeachment bid against Vice President Sara Duterte, and it appears almost certain that another complaint will be filed against her once the one-year ban lapses.

But even before 6 February, three impeachment complaints have already been lodged — this time against President Bongbong Marcos. However, the validity and sincerity of the first complaint have been questioned, with the opposition openly alleging that it was not designed to prosper or secure a conviction but merely to trigger the one-year ban to protect the President.

Meanwhile, the second and third complaints from the Makabayan bloc and the pro-Duterte bloc were initially not received by the Office of the Secretary General of the House of Representatives the first time they were filed, allegedly due to the absence of SecGen Cheloy Garafil. 

The seemingly discriminatory treatment of these latest complaints coming from the opposition makes one wonder if there is indeed a smidgeon of truth in the allegations questioning the first complaint, which, by the way, was noticeably met with very little resistance from the House, despite coming from a “random” concerned citizen and member of the legal profession.

Mind you, the second complaint from the Makabayan bloc was eventually endorsed along with the first, in which case it should have been received the first time. After all, even if the head of an agency is away or on leave, the office is expected to function, especially when the act of receiving is merely ministerial.

The third complaint initiated by the pro-Duterte camp has not been given due course for failure to obtain an endorsement from any legislator. No surprise there. No congressman, even sleeper Duterte supporters, has dared to endorse the impeachment complaint coming from the pro-Duterte camp. After all, the flood control controversy is still hanging over Congress. Timing-wise, it is too early to jump ship.

But if the Marcos administration really wants the public to believe that it is ready, prepared and unafraid to face any impeachment complaint against the President, then it should welcome all complaints and trust the process of determining their sufficiency in form and substance. Again, there is inconsistency between the pronouncements and the actions of the Marcos administration. While we can all wonder who is strategizing and giving instructions on how to proceed, whoever that is seems far removed from the realities of public perception and optics.

That said, the Marcos administration has a lot to worry about. At this point, a rehashing of an impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte over confidential funds will just look like targeted political persecution — a move designed to eliminate a formidable political enemy to pave the way for the administration’s anointed successor to take over in 2028.

More importantly, what moral ascendancy do both houses of Congress have to remove, and worse, disqualify the Vice President, or the President, from ever holding public office when they, and their favored contractors, are also accused of plundering hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money? The unresolved flood control scandal puts to shame the accusations that VP Sara Duterte mishandled what now looks like a measly P400 million. Imagine how incredulous it is to have the accused, the judge and the jury all tainted as complicit or accused of pilfering from the public coffers.