Bautista impeachment raps dismissed
As expected, the House Committee on Justice chaired by Oriental Mindoro 2nd Rep. Reynaldo Umali dismissed on Wednesday the impeachment complaint filed against Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Andres Bautista.
The complaint lodged by former Negros Oriental Rep. Jacinto Paras and lawyer Ferdinand Topacio was dismissed after it failed to hurdle the initial requirement of sufficiency in form during a Justice panel’s hearing.
Deputy Speaker Gwendolyn Garcia of Cebu’s 3rd District, one of the three endorsers of the ouster rap, moved to have the 18-page
complaint declared sufficient in form. But the motion was defeated via vote of 2-26.
Garcia and fellow endorser, Kabayan Party-list Rep. Harry Roque, were the only two to enter an affirmative vote. The third endorser, Cavite 7th District Rep. Abraham Tolentino, is not a Justice Committee member and thus couldn’t vote.
“The insufficiency in form renders this complaint dismissed,” Umali said.
Among those who voted against the motion was the Majority Floor Leader Rudolfo Fariñas of Ilocos Norte’s 1st District. He chairs the powerful Committee on Rules.
The Paras-Topacio complaint was duly filed before the Office of the Secretary General of the House of Representatives on August 23. At the plenary, the Rules Committee subsequently referred the complaint to the Umali panel last September 7.
The Oriental Mindoro solon said that in effect, the one-year bar on impeachment complaints against Bautista will last until September 7, 2018.
The Aquino administration appointee was being accused of neglecting to address the March, 2016, voter data leak, the changing of the server script in the May, 2016, elections, and failing to bare all his assets in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN).
Before the filing, Bautista’s estranged wife, Patricia, publicly accused the Comelec official of amassing R1 billion worth of ill-gotten wealth.
Patricia attended the hearing but Fariñas said she “didn’t have speaking rights” in the proceedings.
“Mrs. Bautista should have served as the complainant and then endorse her complaint. I’m wondering why that didn’t happen,” Fariñas told the endorsers in Filipino.
Chairman Bautista welcomed the dismissal of the impeachment complaint, thanking the committee and the House leadership for “upholding the rule of law” and for their “objectivity and fairness.”
“This proves to be a significant step in clearing my name after the malicious accusations hurled against me,” said Bautista.
“As I have always maintained, the allegations are fabricated and baseless,” he added.
With the dismissal, Bautista said it is business as usual at the Comelec.
But Bautista’s estranged wife Patricia said the poll chief is not yet off the hook and that appropriate charges, particularly plunder, will be filed against him.
She said the dismissal of the 23-page complaint was a temporary setback.
“We remain undeterred. It is just the start. We believe in the system, in the goodwill, and good sense of the Filipino people. This is just bump on the road, but as in all things we remain committed,” she told reporters. Substitute verification rejected
The expectation by some that the particular complaint would get junked by the Justice panel actually stemmed from observations that it shared the same defect as the impeachment complaint filed against Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno by Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) founding chairman Dante Jimenez and Vanguard of the Philippine Constitution, Inc. (VPCI) president Eligio Mallari.
The Jimenez-Mallari complaint was “dismissed with prejudice” by the same committee just last week due to technically flawed phrasing in the document’s verification. This doomed the complaint outright as it was considered insufficient in form.
If found sufficient in form, the complaint will undergo a test of sufficiency in substance.
Roque, on September 13, filed a motion for a substitute verification on the Paras-Topacio complaint although he refused to acknowledge during the hearing that it had any “defects.”
“The substitution is not prohibited. There is nothing explicitly provided in the rules which provides that any matter of form cannot be corrected.
“In fact, our rules explicitly provides under Section IV (Rules on Impeachment Proceedings) that if complaint is found insufficient in form, it shall be returned to the Sec-Gen within three session days with a detailed explanation of its insufficiency,” Roque explained. From there, the complainants are supposedly allowed to address the insufficiency.
He went on to cite various SC jurisprudence wherein deficiencies in complaints were allowed to be “fixed.”
Roque’s motion for the acceptance of the substitute verification was also lost via 2-27 vote. (With reports from Leslie Ann G. Aquino and Charissa L. Atienza)