Makabayan confident impeachment rap vs VP would gain traction

MANILA, Philippines — The Makabayan bloc is confident that the impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte will gain traction and move, despite fears that Congress does not have much time to remove the second-highest official from office.

In a briefing on Wednesday, before progressive groups led by the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) filed their complaint, sectoral leaders were asked if they are not concerned about time since past impeachment proceedings usually took months before it was finished.

As of Wednesday, the House can only hold up to 12 session days before it adjourns on December 20 for the Christmas break, if Thursdays and Fridays are included. Session then resumes on January 13, 2025, but there would only be 20 possible session days before adjournment on February 7, 2025 for the election campaign season.

READ: 2nd impeachment rap vs VP Duterte cites 1 ground for quicker talks

According to former lawmaker and Bayan chairperson Teddy Casiño, his experience in Congress has shown that time is not a concern if lawmakers have the will to act on a particular measure.

“I’ve spent some time in Congress, and I know that, if they want to hasten the process, it would be easy to do so. And we are (confident) because Congress have been discussing the issue for so long, we think lawmakers know the grounds.,” Casiño said.

“It’s really a matter of just systematizing and putting all these things in a formal complaint. I think many of our lawmakers know what happened. And they’re just waiting for someone to file a complaint,” he added.

Another former lawmaker and now Bayan Muna chairperson Neri Colmenares said that they do not think the impeachment complaint that they filed would need four months just like what happened to former Chief Justice Renato Corona, as their petition only used a single ground—betrayal of public trust.

READ: ‘Mary Grace Piattos’ does not exist, PSA confirms

“I was a public prosecutor during the Corona impeachment, well there is betrayal, a culpable violation of the Constitution, there is graft and corruption, eight acts, that’s why it took four months. Anyway, if you can prove an impeachable ground in one act, that is enough,” Colmenares said.

“So we would no longer target something like the Corona case which took four months and in fact, because we are just filing a complaint based on a single ground, maybe this would be quicker, maybe it would only take a month for the Senate trial,” he added.

But while the complaint filed by Bayan and other groups only used one ground, a separate complaint filed by civil society organizations that was endorsed by Akbayan party-list Rep. Percival Cendaña used five grounds:

• culpable violation of the constitution
• graft and corruption
• bribery
• betrayal of public trust
• other high crimes

Asked if a possible consolidation of the two complaints filed would mean a longer time, Bayan president Renato Reyes said it is still early to anticipate the steps that the House will take.

Furthermore, Reyes cited another method to advance impeachment complaints—an impeachment complaint filed by at least one-thirds of all House members, which in this case, totals to 103.

“We do not know what will be the action of the Congress on the complaints, normally if there are many complaints, it can be referred to the justice committee and the determination of form and substance and consolidation of the complaints will happen there,” Reyes said.

“It will be up to the House as to what would be the strongest grounds to base the case on, and what would be submitted as articles of impeachment. But there is also a fast-track, where it would no longer go through the (committee on) justice.),” he added.

Reyes was referring to Section 3, Paragraph 4 of Article XI of the 1987 Constitution, which states that a Senate trial would proceed “in case the verified complaint or resolution of impeachment is filed by at least one-third of all the Members of the House.”

Duterte and her offices—the Office of the Vice President (OVP), and previously, the Department of Education (DepEd)—have been the subject of a House investigation due to questions on how the confidential funds (CFs) were utilized.

Some of the issues include a discovery that acknowledgement receipts (ARs) for the CFs were signed by a certain Mary Grace Piattos—which Antipolo Rep. Romeo Acop said has a first name similar to a coffee shop, and a last name that is a famous potato chip brand.

The ARs signed off by Piattos were part of the liquidation reports discussed during the same hearing, referring to the P23.8 million confidential funds covered by 158 receipts.

On Tuesday, the Philippine Statistics Authority confirmed that the name Mary Grace Piattos does not appear on their live birth, marriage, and death registry.