Bautista impeachment may take one month to start

Commission on Elections Chairman Andres Bautista at the COMELEC budget hearing at the House of Representatives. INQUIRER PHOTO/LYN RILLON

Although the House of Representatives has formally received the impeachment complaint against Commission on Elections Chairman Andres Bautista may take a month at most for proceedings to start.

Justice committee chair Rep Reynaldo Umali said House rules provided for Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez to forward the rules committee within 10 session days. Three plenary sessions are held every week from Monday to Wednesday.

“More or less, that’s one month. That’s his prerogative,” Umali said in a radio interview.

He noted the Speaker can even decide within period to allow more representative to endorse the complaint filed by former lawmaker Jacinto Paras and lawyer Ferdinand Topacio.

If the number of endorsements reach 98, or one-third of the House’s membership, proceedings at the justice committee could be cut short to let the complaint head sooner to the Senate. Umali cited the case of President Joseph Estrada, who ended up resigning after a contentious trial in 2001.

But Umali did not confirm if this too would be the case for Bautista.

“I’m just saying it’s possible,” he said. “The Speaker was given enough time to fulfill that role to ease [the workload of] the House of Representatives and bring it right away to the Senate.”

The complaint against Bautista was anchored on the allegations of his estranged wife Patricia that he amassed ill-gotten wealth and received commissions from the law firm of election technology provider Smartmatic. It was also premised on the breach of data of millions of voters in the so-called Comeleak in 2016.

While the complaint would have to hurdle concerns about Paras and Topacio’s lack of personal knowledge about the allegations, Umali said there might be an out for them.

“If it’s not personal knowledge, it must come from authentic documents. That documents must be authenticated to qualify as such in terms of sufficiency in form. That would be our guideline,” Umali said.

He recalled that the impeachment complaint filed by Magdalo Rep. Gary Alejano against President Duterte was dismissed for insufficiency in substance, because his attachments consisted of news clippings which are considered hearsay evidence.

Whether this would be the fate of the Bautista complaint would depend too on the authenticity of the bank documents showing his alleged ill-gotten wealth, Umali said.

“Are the bank documents authentic? If not, that’s useless too,” he said.

Another concern about the impeachment complaint was the issue of whether Patricia is bound by marital confidentiality.

However, Umali said he understood it to be “only applicable in criminal cases.”

“Impeachment cases are sui generis so it is a class in itself. So it can neither be considered as criminal or administrative or civil, no? Again, this is a novel issue that has to be considered,” he said. JE

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