Disbarment case mulled vs Leni impeachers

MANILA, Philippines - Two lawyers eyeing to impeach Vice President Leni Robredo are in hot water.

Rep. Jericho Nograles of party-list group Puwersa ng Bayaning Atleta said yesterday he is studying the filing of a disbarment case against Bruce Rivera and Trixie Cruz Angeles.

“They committed misrepresentation and bad faith by including my name in their supposed impeachment complaint against Vice President Robredo without my knowledge or consent. They are lawyers. They should know what misrepresentation is,” he said.

Rivera served as lawyer of suspected multibillion-peso pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles.

Angeles was once the counsel of then fugitive ex-Marine captain and now Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon. In August 2016, the Supreme Court suspended her from the practice of law for three years for her alleged failure to deliver service in a marriage annulment case despite receipt of P350,000 in fees.

The two claimed there was “miscommunication” with Nograles.

However, Nograles told reporters that on Tuesday, two persons, whom he later learned were Rivera and Angeles, left their impeachment complaint against Robredo with his secretary at the House of Representatives.

When the secretary turned over the document to him, he immediately noticed that his name was included in the first page of the complaint. He then asked his secretary to call the two persons to ask them to see him.

“Do I know you? Have we met before? Did I authorize you to include my name in this paper? What made you do it?” Nograles recalled confronting the two with a raised voice.

He said the two introduced themselves as Rivera and Angeles and told him they were asking him to endorse their impeachment complaint.

“I met them for the first time that day,” he said.

He later showed reporters the first page of the document, which the two lawyers did not release to the media.

On the left portion were the names of the supposed complainants: Rivera, Angeles, Tomas Berenguer, Ahmed Paglinawan, Antonio Contreras and Epimaco Densing III.

Below their names was printed: “Through Rep. Jericho Nograles, PBA Party-list.”

Nograles said from the way the alleged complainants worded their petition, he did not know if they were asking him to be “a co-complainant, a messenger or conduit or an endorser.”

“Why ‘through’ if they intended me to be a co-complainant or complainant-endorser? They must have wanted me to be just a conduit of their complaint. I felt insulted,” he said.

Under the impeachment rules of the House, a congressman can be a complainant-endorser or just an endorser. He must sign a resolution of endorsement. A complaint filed by a citizen needs at least one House member-endorser.

Nograles said it is possible that the supposed impeachment complainants sent their petition to other congressmen with these lawmakers’ names in it.

Rivera and his colleagues have so far failed to convince any House member to endorse their complaint.

Its status is the same as that filed by Marcos loyalist lawyer Oliver Lozano and Melchor Chavez: a mere scrap of paper.

Lozano and Chavez presented their complaint to the office of Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, but the latter did not endorse it. – With Perseus Echeminada, Helen Flores, Paolo Romero