Extraordinary remedy

I am sure we would not be having this impeach GMA threats at this time of the year if GMA allies in the Lower House didn’t stifle the impeachment case initiated last year on a mere technicality. If the Judiciary Committee could have just gone through the motions of receiving the evidence to determine probable cause and then simply declare that the evidence on hand does not establish such probable cause, the ending of last year’s impeachment case would have been more conclusive and its repeat this year is less likely. After all, probable cause is extremely hard to establish hence they should have allowed a hearing on this matter. So GMA’s allies in the Lower House should change their strategy or else we will have more of the same impeachment threats in the years to come.

To be sure another impeachment proceeding against GMA will already be a record of sorts. In the Philippine setting, the impeachment tool has only been used four times before GMA. The first was in 1949 when a complaint was filed against President Quirino under the 1935 Constitution. Next was the complaint filed against GMA’s father President Macapagal in 1963 also under the 1935 Constitution. The third was filed against President Marcos in 1986 under the 1973 Constitution. And the fourth was filed against Estrada in 2000 under the 1987 Constitution. Quirino, Macapagal and Marcos were not impeached for failure to obtain the required number of votes in Congress. Only Estrada was impeached. If an impeachment case will be instituted against GMA this year, she will be the first President against whom two impeachment cases have been initiated.

According to a noted UP law professor and delegate to the 1971 Constitutional Convention, Antonio R. Tupaz, "Impeachment is an exceptional method of removing exceptional public officials exercised by Congress with exceptional caution. It is seldom employed not because caution is desirable but because of the extreme difficulty in establishing probable cause and in having a trial by men trained to legislate but untrained in judicial process". Even though seldom used, the inconclusive ending of last year’s impeachment case renders another one this year seemingly imperative notwithstanding the slim chance it has under the existing political set up.

The case will not be any stronger by including and adding as grounds the violations of the Constitution found by the Supreme Court to have been committed by this administration particularly E.O. 464, the CPR and Proclamation 1017. If the previous charges of "lying, cheating and stealing" are so nebulous and quite difficult to establish, these additional grounds are all the more devoid of any semblance of merit. To be a ground for impeachment, violations of the Constitution must be "culpable", which means censurable, blamable, or reprehensible. The violations found by the SC in those three cases are apparently the result of an honest to goodness belief and reliance in the correctness of interpretations obviously given by legal advisers with political than purely legal motives. Blame should be laid on the advisers rather than the President. The President’s fault if any is in choosing wrong advisers. Choosing wrong advisers is not an impeachable offense.

The offenses constituting grounds for impeachment are political in nature. According to Alexander Hamilton, one of the framers of the American Constitution after which our law on impeachment is patterned, the subject of impeachment are "those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to society itself".

Impeachment is supposed to be a "key check to the executive responsibility" in a government characterized by the separation of powers where the executive, the judiciary and the legislature are separate and distinct. Considering that the executive responsibility is lodged chiefly in a President, impeachment is designed as a remedy against "executive tyranny". The legislative branch empowered to initiate and try impeachment cases must always keep in mind these basic principles on impeachment as it embarks once again on this excruciating, tedious and highly divisive process.

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