House Committee on Justice Chair Gerville Luistro on Wednesday said impeachment must be grounded on clearly pleaded facts and not on suspicion or political considerations.
Luistro made the statement ahead of the committee’s crucial vote on whether two impeachment complaints against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. would move forward.
She stressed that an impeachment complaint must meet a strict constitutional threshold and cannot rely on loose associations or unproven claims.
“Significantly, for a complaint to be sufficient in substance, let us all be reminded, it must do more than suggest wrongdoing by association or inference,” Luistro said in her opening statement as the panel continued its determination of the sufficiency in substance of the impeachment complaints against the President.
“It must plead facts with particularity, showing that the official personally participated in knowingly authorized or culpably ignored acts that strike at the integrity of the office itself,” she added.
Luistro warned against using impeachment as a sweeping remedy for alleged wrongdoing elsewhere in government or for disputed policy decisions, emphasizing that the process “does not operate on a theory of strict liability for governance.”
“The official is not constitutionally impeachable simply because wrongdoing is alleged somewhere in the bureaucracy or because a policy decision is later criticized or questioned,” she said.
“To hold otherwise would collapse the careful constitutional design and render every official perpetually vulnerable to impeachment based on suspicion alone.”
She described the committee’s role as narrowly defined and legally exacting.
“Our task today is therefore disciplined, not dismissive, exacting, not adversarial,” Luistro said.
The panel’s duty, she added, is to determine “whether the allegations as written stand on constitutional ground or whether they rest on speculation, conjecture, or political disagreement dressed merely in constitutional language.”
Luistro also underscored that the proceedings are not a gauge of political sentiment.
“Our proceeding today is intended to test the legal sufficiency of the complaint, not their popularity, not their rhetoric, not their political appeal,” she said.
“In doing so, this committee affirms a simple but vital principle: impeachment must protect the Constitution, not weaken it,” she added.