SPEAKER Pantaleon Alvarez on Tuesday maintained he is determined to file a credible and substantive impeachment case against Vice President Leni Robredo.
“I am still studying it,” Alvarez said even as he refused to comment on the impeachment case filed by lawyer and serial impeachment filer Oliver Lozano against Robredo.
“I have not seen the complaint,” Alvarez told The Manila Standard in a text message.
Alvarez earlier accused Robredo of having a hand in the impeachment case filed against President Rodrigo Duterte by Magdalo Rep. Gary Alejano.
Alvarez noted that the filing of the impeachment complaint came on the heels of a video message Robredo sent to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs where she criticized the conduct of the administration’s war against illegal drugs.
“I will file [the impeachment complaint] as soon as I have a complete study and recommendation by my lawyers,” Alvarez said last week.
Isabela Rep. Rodito Albano doubted that the Lozano impeachment complaint was credible.
“Why Oliver Lozano? He is a perpetual impeacher,” Albano said.
He added, however, that he did not think Duterte wanted Robredo ousted.
Liberal Party members of the House of Representatives backed Robredo, their party chairman.
Marikina Rep. Miro Quimbo, an LP member, said Congress “should not spend a single second on this baseless complaint,” referring to the Lozano draft.
“It is a mere scrap of paper that is supported not by any evidence, but by mere erroneous conclusions of law. Congress will only end up wasting time better spent on much needed legislation including those on tax reform, traffic crisis act, as well as those that seek to make economic gains more inclusive,” Quimbo said.
He added: “Congress should not allow itself to be used by these ‘recidivist impeachers’ who trivialize this deeply sacred accountability measure enshrined in our constitution. We must not allow Congress and its members to be dragged into their petty political charades.”
On Tuesday, Lozano sought Alvarez’s endorsement of his six-page impeachment complaint against Robredo “for culpable violation of the Constitution and/or betrayal of public trust.”
“She is the termite of the government. Her unfaithfulness has extended to the betrayal of the public trust [and] culpable violation of the Constitution,” Lozano said in his letter to Alvarez.
In his complaint, Lozano accused Robredo of having committed “acts of injustice prejudicial to the nation and public welfare, which constitute culpable violation of the Constitution.”
Lozano dismissed as “false news” that 7,000 people had been killed by summary execution, as Robredo said in her video message to a side event of the annual meeting of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs.
Because of this, Lozano said Robredo committed a “betrayal of public trust” for she has “done injustice to the Filipino people and disservice to the nation.”
Lozano also said Robredo “betrayed the people by shaming the nation with her dishonest message to the United Nation.”
“The respondent is duty bound to act within the framework of the Constitution but her acts of dishonesty and moral bankruptcy breached the bounds of the Fundamental Law,” Lozano said in his complaint.
Senator Francis Pangilinan on Tuesday scored Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III after he challenged LP senators to denounce the filing of an impeachment complaint against President Duterte, to show they had no hand in it.
“Who is he to tell us what to do? He is not the only elected senator,” Pangilinan, president of the LP, said in a statement.
“We are not behind the impeachment complaint, but we are also not puppets who merely follow,” he added.
Pangilinan noted that they have already been stripped off of committee chairmanships in the Senate and yet are expected to denounce the complaint only to prove that they are not behind it.
In an interview over radio dzBB on Sunday, Pimentel challenged LP senators to denounce Alejano’s filing of an impeachment complaint against Duterte.
Pimentel noted how the LP senators suddenly considered Duterte as one of the “basic problems” of the country that they wanted to focus on.
Aside from Pangilinan, the LP senators are Senate Minority Franklin Drilon, and Senators Leila de Lima and Paolo Benigno Aquino IV. They are all part of the Senate minority bloc.
Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto, also a member of the LP, is part of the majority bloc.
Despite being an LP member, Recto said he remains independent.
Senator Antonio Trillanes IV said the Magdalo has a long track record of conviction and consistency in pushing for reforms and fighting corrupt public officials like Duterte.
Regardless of the criticisms being hurled by Duterte against the group, he said they will not back down.
Duterte on Monday denounced Trillanes and Alejano as cowards, saying they led mutinies against the government only to surrender when they were surrounded.