• OFFICE OF REP. EDCEL C. LAGMAN
• 7 FEBRUARY 2012
• Rep. Edcel C. Lagman
• Independent – Albay

 DEL CASTILLO IMPEACHMENT RAP

PURSUED DESPITE END OF PERIOD

              Insisting that session days spanning several calendar days can be reckoned as only one “session day” in the absence of an intervening adjournment, the majority coalition members in the House Committee on Justice rejected the motion of Rep. Edcel C. Lagman, Independent – Albay, that the committee has lost jurisdiction over the impeachment complaint against Justice Mariano del Castillo due to its failure to dispose of the complaint before the 60-day reglementary period expired last year.

              Lagman said that the majority's contention is “an aberration in chronology” even as it “ inordinately taxes the imagination and credulity for a session to go on in perpetuity day after day, and yet be considered as a single “session day”.

              By foisting a self-serving and erroneous computation, the House violates with impunity the Constitution and its own rule that the Committee on Justice has only 60 session days within which to resolve an impeachment complaint from the time it is referred to the committee.

             “A session day corresponds to a calendar day when the House is assembled and transacts business on a daily basis as documented in the congressional journal,” Lagman added.

             The impeachment complaint against del Castillo was referred to the committee as early as February 2, 2011 and according to Lagman as of February 6, 2012, 84 session days have elapsed or 24 days over the limited, albeit lengthy, 60 session days.

             Lagman urged that since the committee stripped itself of jurisdiction by its own inaction, the impeachment complaint must perforce be dismissed automatically.