Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman. INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO/RYAN LEAGOGO
Reason must triumph over politics as the House of Representatives considers the impeachment complaints against the country’s two most powerful officials, opposition leader Edcel Lagman said on Wednesday.
“The ascendancy of reason must prevail over the superiority of numbers when the House of Representatives assesses the disparate impeachment complaints,” the Albay representative said in a statement.
Speaking for the first time on the impeachment complaint against President Duterte and the one brought to the Speaker’s office for endorsement against Vice President Leni Robredo, Lagman, the leader of the “Magnificent 7” independent minority bloc, said there was a “whale of a difference” between the two cases.
“While President Duterte is charged with the high crimes of multiple murders and crimes against humanity for the summary killing of around 8,000 drug suspects … Vice President Robredo is supposedly charged with bringing to the attention of the United Nations … the extrajudicial killings committed in the wake of President Duterte’s deadly campaign,” he said.
“President Duterte is charged with betrayal of public trust for said extrajudicial killings, while Vice President Robredo upheld public trust by reporting said summary executions to seek the stoppage of and sanctions for said wanton criminality,” Lagman said.
The impeachment case against Mr. Duterte was filed by Lagman’s ally, Magdalo Rep. Gary Alejano, who accused the President of the mass murder of 8,000 suspected drug offenders and amassing P2.2 billion in unexplained wealth, among others.
Lagman said a fair reading of the Alejano complaint showed that “it is sufficient in form and in substance.”