Palace unfazed by threat of impeachment vs Du30
MANILA — Malacañang yesterday shrugged off an opposition lawmaker’s threat to file another impeachment complaint against President Rodrigo Duterte over his supposed acceptance of intelligence information from a foreign country.
Duterte on Tuesday accused the Liberal Party, Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, and communist rebels of plotting to overthrow him. He said a foreign country “sympathetic” to him provided him information on opposition figures.
If this was true, the president may have violated the country’s anti-wiretapping law and allowed breach of security by a foreign country, said Magdalo partylist Representative Gary Alejano, whose group has been accused by the president of conniving with the communists and other opposition forces to oust him.
“Eh alam naman iyan ng buong kasama niya. They always file an impeachment complaint but nothing happens. So let him file another impeachment complaint because nothing will happen because it is pointless,” Roque said in a press briefing.
The president did not identify his foreign source of intelligence information in his televised interview Tuesday with Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo.
But Alejano pointed out that Duterte earlier said Chinese President Xi Jinping had assured him that he would not let him get ousted.
Roque has also downplayed the supposed spying of a foreign country on the president’s critics, saying sharing “intelligence information” is part of “diplomatic relations.”