CODAL: People's interest prejudiced by House decision on prejudicial questions

One of the impeachment co-complainants, the Counsels for the Defense of Liberties (CODAL), issued the following legal analysis and statement on the House vote yesterday:

The recent decision of the House majority to discuss ‘prejudicial questions’ first rather than the substance and form of the impeachment complaints, is a clear attempt to kill the Lozano Complaint as Amended in the least ‘disruptive’ manner. The Majority is afraid that killing the impeachment proceedings during the sufficiency in substance and form hearings will not be easy as issues such as whether “it is a second complaint and therefore barred” cannot be directly tackled under said hearings. The hearing on prejudicial questions is the route which will give the Majority the venue to easily dismiss the Amended Complaint, not on the ground of sufficiency in form or substance, but on ‘infirmities’ that the majority will claim to be contrary to the Constitution.

Firstly, the Section 4 of the Rules on Impeachment of the 13th Congress provides that the Justice Committee “shall determine whether the complaint is sufficient in form and substance”. Sufficiency in form requires that the Complaint is properly verified and endorsed. Sufficiency in substance “is met if there is a recital of facts constituting the offense charged and determinative of the jurisdiction of the committee”.[1] This means that the function of the committee is merely to find out if the charges, presuming the allegations in a complaint were true, constitutes impeachable offenses. Nowhere in the rules is the Committee tasked with determining prejudicial questions such as whether a complaint is barred for being a second impeachment complaint. If the Justice Committee will follow its rules, it may only dismiss the Lopez impeachment complaint for insufficiency in form as it was not verified, a fatal mistake on the part of its lawyer-complainant.

Secondly, tackling the “prejudicial questions” will only prolong the hearings, not on the substance of the complaint, but on issues that cannot even be raised by members of Congress. Whether or not the amended complaint is barred as a second complaint is a matter of defense, personal to Pres. Arroyo and cannot be claimed by the Majority on her behalf. Congress should give her the option whether or not to raise that defense. If Pres. Arroyo wants to have her day in court, she may even waive such defense and answer the Amended Complaint point by point. Moves by members of the Majority to lawyer for Pres. Arroyo is not only unethical but is actually violative of Section 14, Article VI of the 1987 Constitution which provides:

Section 14. No Senator or Member of the House of Representatives may personally appear as counsel before any court of justice or before the Electoral Tribunals, or quasi-judicial and other administrative bodies. Neither shall he, directly or indirectly, be interested financially in any contract with, or in any franchise or special privilege granted by the Government, or any subdivision, agency, or instrumentality thereof, including any government-owned or controlled corporation, or its subsidiary, during his term of office. He shall not intervene in any matter before any office of the Government for his pecuniary benefit or where he may be called upon to act on account of his office.

In fact, any member of Congress who decided in one way or the other on impeachment related issues because they were given benefits through the road users tax, appointment of their relatives to juicy government posts or given cash by Malacanang, may be charged for criminal offenses under various anti-graft laws.

The Amended Complaint is not barred both under the Constitution and the Supreme Court ruling in Francisco vs. House of Representatives. Section 3 (1) of Article XI of the Constitution dictates that “The House of Representatives shall have exclusive power to initiate all cases of impeachment”. The Article of Impeachment which will be filed by the House is ‘one’ case, even if it will contain the Amended Complaint or 10 other complaints. It is only when the Article of Impeachment is endorsed to the Senate that a case is ‘deemed’ initiated. The theory of the Majority that Lozano has already ‘initiated’ the case is violative of the Constitution which clearly grants to Congress, not to Lozano or any one else, the sole power to initiate the same.

However, if one were to abide by the Francisco doctrine, which defined the term ‘initiate’ to mean the filing and ‘referral of an impeachment complaint to the Justice Committee’, the Amended Complaint is still valid—all the complaints were filed with the Committee on Justice simultaneously and therefore none of them were ‘second’ complaints as contemplated by the Francisco ruling. The fact that the referral was done in one motion on the same session day is the operative act, and not the time when these were subsequently received by the Justice Committee. To argue that one complaint is first because it is a ‘few seconds’ ahead of the other is without legal and constitutional basis verging on absurdity.

Furthermore, the term ‘filing’ contemplates the submission of a complaint at the time the House of Representatives is in session. Since the original Lozano and Lopez complaints were filed at the time the House was in recess, they are also deemed to have been filed when Congress started its session on 25 July 2005, the same day that the Amended Complaint was filed.

CODAL believes that the Majority by delaying the proceedings, has done a disservice to the people who have long waited to hear the contents the complaints.

Atty. Neri Javier Colmenares
CODAL Convenor and Spokesperson