‘Impeachment 101’

As expected, the impeachment case filed against President Rodrigo Duterte ended up in a thrash bin. Is it a case of GIGO, or garbage-in, garbage-out?

In the field of computer science, now called information and communications technology, GIGO refers to the fact that computers – since they operate by logical processes – will unquestioningly process flawed, even nonsensical, input data (“garbage in”) and produce undesired, often nonsensical, output (“garbage out”).

The impeachment complaint against President Duterte is apparently not a GIGO attempt on the part of those behind it. Magdalo party-list Rep. Gary Alejano who initiated the impeachment case already conceded beforehand they would not succeed to remove President Duterte through impeachment process at this stage of the administration that continues to enjoy high, double-digit public trust rating.

As a member of Congress, Rep. Alejano became the “endorser” of his own impeachment complaint as allowed by the House Rules on Impeachment. Alejano filed it last March 16 while both chambers of the 17th Congress adjourned for their month-long Lenten break.

Given the reality of the 17th Congress controlled by administration allies, Alejano admitted he still went for it nonetheless.

Among the charges enumerated in the impeachment case against President Duterte is alleged betrayal of public trust in the conduct of his administration’s war against illegal drugs in which more than 7,000 drug suspects so far have been reported killed. Alejano included in his impeachment complaint the reported extrajudicial killings (EJKs) while he was still the former Davao City Mayor. 

As already foreseen, the House committee on justice chaired by Rep. Reynaldo Umali (Mindoro, PDP-Laban) unanimously voted to dismiss Alejano’s impeachment complaint last Monday. Finding insufficient in both form and substance, it did not take long for the 50-man House committee on justice to junk Alejano’s impeachment.

It was the first, and it turned out to be the last, public hearing of the Alejano impeachment complaint.

Immediately after the House committee on justice junked his complaint, Alejano announced he “might” file a separate case against President Duterte before the International Criminal Court (ICC). While saying he accepts the decision of his colleagues for allowing his impeachment complaint to go through the process, Alejano disclosed he may follow suit of a private lawyer who initiated a case before an international body abroad to seek justice for the victims of alleged EJKs of President Duterte’s drug war in the Philippines.

He was, of course, referring to lawyer Jude Sabio who flew all the way to The Hague in Netherlands where he lodged a case of crime against humanity against President Duterte last April 24.

Umali noted the filing of Alejano’s impeach complaint was apparently timed to cash in on the projected fallout of the “super coalition” at the Lower House following the shake-up of committee chairmanships. This was after Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez removed from their respective chairmanships the Congressmen who voted "no" to the death penalty bill the Lower Chamber approved earlier.

However, as it turned out after Congress resumed sessions, there were more Liberal Party (LP) members who defected to join the PDP-Laban-led “super coalition.” Umali himself is a former LP who jumped to the new ruling party at the start of the 17th Congress.

We had both Umali and Alejano as guests at the Kapihan sa Manila Bay breakfast forum last Wednesday at Cafe Adriatico, in Remedios Circle in Malate. During our post-impeachment assessment, Alejano admitted plans to elevate before the ICC his impeachment complaint “remains an option” for him and his group of like-minded people whom he refused to identify.

But a former member of Magdalo soldiers who staged the botched coup attempt against former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, openly supports Alejano’s impeach complaint, fellow putschist now Senator Antonio Trillanes IV.

Why these supporters of his impeach complaint refused to come out in the open, Alejano pointed to President Duterte’s public statements about “killing” drug users and those helping or supporting them like their lawyers. He cited the particular case of the killing of the lawyer of Mayor of Albuerra who also subsequently was killed by policemen while inside his jail in Leyte.

“There is an atmosphere of fear… on people killed on streets, and on investigations conducted by agencies to critics,” said Alejano. “The threat is real,” he noted. Alejano also cited as example the detention of Senator Leila de Lima after she spoke against the alleged EJKs of the Duterte administration in the guise of war on illegal drugs.

Unfazed by the defeat of his impeach initiative, the Magdalo party-list representative reiterated his belief President Duterte is guilty as charged and deserves to be removed from office.

Umali explained at length how he tried his best to conduct the proceedings in accordance with the rules though knowing Alejano is outnumbered. A veteran of several impeachment proceedings, Umali told me he felt like he was teaching “Impeachment 101” to his colleagues during the hearing. 

But an impeachment case is a numbers game. The pro-administration controlled House chamber showed its strength as they thrashed the impeach complaint a few hours before President Duterte returned to Manila from his latest official trips abroad. The junking of the impeach complaint became sort of a welcome gift to the successful trips of the President to his first ever attendance to the World Economic Forum held in Cambodia and at the Road and Belt Forum held in Bejing one after the other. And the rest, as we say, is history.

The “last rites,” if we may call it, for the dead impeachment case will be administered at the plenary sessions of the House next week. Congress will go on sine die adjournment on June 3. As their first regular sessions officially wind down, President Duterte now enjoys one-year reprieve and immunity against any new impeachment attempt against him.

While President Duterte enjoys this one-year immunity, his phone pal friend US President Donald Trump is just getting his own dose of impeachment attempt at the US Congress. He may yet get another phone call from the White House, this time to ask him for some tips on “Impeachment 101.”