Dragging

I have yet to understand what the opposition at the House of Representatives means when they speak of a "creeping impeachment."

It seems to me rather obscene. It calls for rules to be too elastic to matter. It allows too much room for opportunism. It suggests that the impeachment complaint filed before President’s State of the Nation Address in a bid to steal the limelight was in fact a work-in-progress, a suit without merit at the onset but insistent that it might have merit somewhere along the way.

Nor do I understand this whole business of announcing a certain number of signatories to the complaint but refusing to disclose who those signatures are.

Spokesmen for the minority say they are not disclosing the names of the signatories to the complaint because they might come under political pressure. Of course.

If these signatories had any conviction in what they do, they ought to be prepared to withstand the pressure. Otherwise, they act without conviction. They refuse to stand up for an act of grave consequences for the nation.

I thought the rules said that when an impeachment complaint is filed, the sponsors of such complaint should appear before the secretary-general of the House of Representatives, affix their signatures before him and take an oath that they have read and understood the complaint and have personal knowledge of its veracity.

So why this business about secret signatories?

As it is, the House minority labors with an impeachment complaint that is a work-in-progress, waiting for accidental turns in circumstances to beef up what looks to be a weak case. In addition, they must carry the added burden of political cowardice and the absence of conviction among those they hope will march with them.

It will be a severe uphill march for those who think impeachment will cure the nation’s miseries.

From the way things stand, both the majority and the minority congressmen must be gearing up not for "creeping impeachment" but for a dragging impeachment.

Thrice before, in the impeachment efforts against Chief Justice Hilario Davide and those against Comelec commissioners Desamito and Tangcangco, the proponents failed. In the singular case of the impeachment effort against Estrada did the proponents prosper to an extent: the House committee on justice did not get to study the complaint at all since that complaint was fast-tracked (including the dramatic and irregular move of then Speaker Manuel Villar) and the trial at the Senate was overtaken by an uprising.

As a matter of course, impeachment should never be easy. It is an effort to dislodge an official granted tenure in order to ensure continuity and predictability in our institutions. The cause for pre-termination must not only be convincing. It must be compelling.

This is the consideration behind the tough requirements specified for the impeachment process. It must never be easy to expel tenured officials. The system should protect tenure from partisan whim and transient emotional episodes. Otherwise, the entire apparatus of governance will be vulnerable to politicking.

So it is that a third of the House is required to affix their signatures to an impeachment motion under oath and, preferably, explain their votes. So it is that two-thirds of the Senate is required to actually remove a tenured official.

Those are tough hurdles. Rightly so, because tenure must be protected to the best possible extent against the tides of partisan whim.

The public must be fully appraised of the odds facing any impeachment effort – and especially the odds facing this impeachment effort against a sitting President who commands the support of the major political party and the majority of elected local executives. This is to avoid a scenario of disorder in the streets that the opposition threatens to unleash should the impeachment effort flounder.

True, impeachment is a political process. But it should not be a partisan one.

It is a process that requires the best introspection and the highest degree of statesmanship because it involves taking a decision that weakens the guarantee of tenure only because the highest national interest requires it. Impeachment should not be a ball that politicians play with casually and out of purely partisan considerations.

If the impeachment initiative we have at hand promises to drag, that is not necessarily bad. It will allow us time to look beyond the partisan excitement of the moment and reflect on the highest national interest.

This is a process that involves not only the legislators of the two chambers of Congress. It is a process that ought to involve the whole people, convening in spirit and soberly reflecting the longer-term consequences of every step we take.

We do need much time to reflect on the issues and options we have. The last two months saw a public unhinged by the histrionics of politicians and the agitprop of those groups that habitually seize upon every opportunity to weaken our institutions.

We don’t now when the squabbling over the rules will end and the debate over the substance of the complaint will begin. Some are estimating that the House justice committee will finally get to begin work in September.

In the meantime, it will do all of us well if the minority at the House heed Senator Joker Arroyo’s advice: talk less and work more.

Over the past week, it seemed that the pro-impeachment minority has put its entire effort at bending the rules to their favor rather than at beefing up their case so that it gains some headway on its own merit. They have been less than assiduous: failing so miserably in following the proper procedure of having signatures affixed under oath before the House secretary-general; shaping the amended complaint to accommodate the specific factional demands of those composing this unholy alliance of leftists and reactionaries such as when the complaint included the actions of General Palparan in the bill of particulars against the President of the Republic; and including the populist bait of value added taxation among the so-called impeachable offenses.

This does not seem like rigorous work. As a consequence, the impeachment complaint looks more like a populist manifesto of incurable trapos rather than a well thought-out document that offers the Republic a better option for the future.

If the proceedings drag, it is because the proponents of the complaint have filed a manifesto for agitprop rather than a real case.