Hearing crashers and dubious witnesses

House Committee on Justice chairman Simeon Datumanong is entirely correct in insisting that only members of the committee participate in deliberations on the sufficiency in form and substance of the impeachment complaint against President GMA.

Those other congressmen who barged into the committee hearing demanding to be accorded the privileges of full-fledged committee members are interlopers and officious meddlers who should have been thrown out by the House sergeant-at-arms.

All they achieved was a delay in the Justice Committee hearings to Monday morning. While Datumanong’s motives in that rather long postponement can be disputed, the pushy legislators gave him good reason to hammer some order into the already raucous proceedings.

If that was a preview of what the public will be treated to, all I can say is that the pro-impeachment bloc is playing right into the hands of GMA’s defenders. Useless diversions such as this will make it possible for Datumanong to fully utilize the 60 session days allowed him under both the Constitution and the impeachment rules which both the majority and minority blocs enthusiastically adopted recently.

The majority’s strategy is clear. I can see no scenario where the impeachment complaint, in whatever configuration it eventually emerges, will clear the Justice Committee with a "favorable" resolution of sufficiency in form and substance. If at all possible, a "contrary" resolution of insufficiency in form and substance will issue very soon from the Committee. If not, Datumanong will be happy to sit on the case until after Christmas and well into the coming year.

By that time, the majority fully expects that the whole country will be thoroughly sick and tired of this impeachment business. By then too, we might be preoccupied with charter change which will hopefully effect some changes in our dilatory, verbose and non-performing legislature. We will also be focusing on the more basic task of surviving in the coming environment of much higher prices of fuel, electricity and consumer goods.

At this point, the betting among pundits is that the minority will not be able to muster the 79 votes it needs to turn this thing around and grab the initiative from the majority. In fact, there could well be inroads into the minority’s 42 or so votes. It will not be because of greater love for GMA, but more pragmatic assessments of where impeachment is headed, given the disarray evident in the pro-ouster forces.

Consistent with the majority’s determination to make the impeachment complaint’s journey through committee excruciatingly torturous, the first battle will be over which complaint will be considered first. Will it be Oliver Lozano’s, Jose Lopez’s or the opposition’s amended version?

One would think that a sensible solution might be to consolidate all three and consider them together. But according to the legal beagles that have entered the arena, it’s not that simple. If the three complaints are treated separately and dealt with in sequence, then it will be the Lozano complaint first at bat. Right on cue, Lozano has publicly stated he now wants his complaint to be considered first, even if he had already agreed to the amendments included in the opposition’s version.

But under the Constitution, only one impeachment case can be initiated within a one-year period. That would mean the more extensive, and supposedly "vastly improved and much stronger," amended complaint of the opposition would have to be set aside for now and possibly taken up next year, if it is re-filed.

Protracted and tedious debate can be expected on this threshold issue, a spectacle which will probably interest only lawyers, legal buffs and masochists who enjoy this sort of jousting on technical niceties. And wait until or, more accurately, if we get to the point of sufficiency of substance. The majority has a few traps laid out there too.

The pro-impeachment group basically has its back to the wall. The impeachment rules, which they inexplicably batted for, are stacked against them. They won’t be able to speed up this process, even if they argued until their eyes pop out of their sockets.

The rules not only are silent on "creeping impeachment," they arguably militate against any short-cut of the process even if the requisite 79 votes are somehow gathered. Still, the only chance of impeachment may be if the Constitutional process is by-passed.

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Just a brief word on all those witnesses who have been selectively recanting portions of their testimonies but standing pat on other aspects thereof: Obviously, there is something going on under the surface and I don’t buy the explanation that God dispatched a lightning bolt to shock these witnesses into being the new saints for truth, justice and, uh, the Filipino Way.

But rather than wade into the rumors and denials of whether the catalyst for these somersaulting witnesses was not conscience but cash, or whether they were persuaded by the prospect of great harm that would befall them or their families, I’d like to point out one basic flaw that makes most of these witnesses susceptible to pubic suspicion about their motives.

Most of the witnesses are not what you might call model Filipinos. The jueteng witnesses, for instance, are confessed participants in illegal gambling. Most admit they came out of the shadows only because their "livelihoods" had been appropriated by someone more powerful than their former sponsors. The witnesses on electoral frauds are knowledgeable only because they themselves engaged in and profited from electoral "operations."

None of this, of course, necessarily disqualifies the witnesses or makes their testimony false or incredible. Even Archbishop Oscar Cruz has insisted that even criminals are capable of telling the truth. And, as a legal proposition, lawyers for the witnesses are already poised to oppose any effort to introduce evidence as to the character of the witnesses.

But as we search for explanations for the reported volte-face of some witnesses, character has to be one of them. As well, of course, as mortal fear. We would prefer witnesses that are selfless, untainted and law-abiding heroes. Often, though, we have to be satisfied with much less, and hope we’re not being taken for a ride. After all, as one wise man said, character is destiny.