With Lozano complaint unverified, dismissing amended complaint kills impeachment process

Following is a statement from Atty. Neri J. Colmenares, spokesperson and convenor of the Counsels for the Defense of Liberties (CODAL), a group of lawyers and co-complainants in the amended complaint:

The move of the House majority to treat the Amended Complaint as a separate complaint and dismiss it this week, while approving the fatally defective Lozano complaint, is a ploy to actually kill the entire impeachment process against Pres. Gloria Arroyo.

The original Lozano complaint and even the Lopez complaint were not verified in violation of the Constitution’s requirement that a complaint for impeachment be verified at the time it is filed. Even if the Justice Committee will allow the Lozano complaint to be belatedly verified such will not cure the defect since Lozano will have to re-file his complaint at a date subsequent to the filing of the Amended Complaint which clearly makes the re-filed Lozano complaint a ‘second’ complaint. It would be impossible for the Justice Committee to deem the Lozano complaint filed on its original date of June 30, 2005 when it was only verified at a subsequent date. Therefore, the Lozano complaint would eventually be dismissed without even looking into its substance completely obliterating all impeachments complaints against Pres. Arroyo.

The Section 3 (2), Art. XI of the Constitution and Section 2 of the House Impeachment Rules requires an impeachment complaint to be verified at the date of filing in order to initiate the impeachment proceedings. The failure of Lozano and Lopez to verify their complaints means that they need to cure that defect before it will be deemed filed and initiated. Lozano managed to cure this defect by filing the verified Amended Complaint, together with other co-complainants, on July 25, 2005. No impeachment complaint was therefore filed and initiated until July 25, 2005. Treating the Amended Complaint separately however, and dismissing it, will also result in the invalidation of the Lozano Complaint. The whole ‘prejudicial’ debate therefore is a deceptive ploy by the allies of Pres. Arroyo to dismiss not just the Amended Complaint, but the whole impeachment proceedings and render inutile the constitutional provisions on impeachment.

CODAL is troubled by the pride with which the House Majority announced that the end of the Amended Complaint is near because the Pres. Arroyo’s allies have the numbers. The House, tasked by the Constitution of finding whether there is probable cause to impeach the President, cannot decide on the basis of numbers but rather on whether probable cause in fact exist after a serious effort to investigate the charges. The dismissal of the impeachment proceedings on the basis of number and not on the basis of whether the president committed impeachable offenses will not solve the current crisis but rather exacerbate it. The battle for numbers is, however, not yet over, with the impeachment complaint needing only 10 signatures to reach the necessary 1/3 votes on or before the Justice Committee Report is presented to the plenary sometime after this week. Pres. Arroyo will not resign. She has also killed the impeachment proceedings against her. She has actually paved the only way for the people to resolve this crisis—people power.