The House of Representatives prosecution panel’s expanded fishing expedition to include Justices of the Supreme Court as witnesses in the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona will inordinately wreck the High Court.
Calling the Justices as witnesses will make them testify not only for or against the Chief Justice but also against each other.
It would also pierce and violate the time-honored confidentiality of the deliberation of the Justices in the disposition of cases.
Moreover, the collective decisions of the Supreme Court will be shredded to pieces as the fishing expedition navigates in to the high seas of the Supreme Court.
The best evidence of the adjudication and voting of the Justices are the decisions themselves and the dissents, if any, wherein individual Justices voted for or against the collective ruling of the majority.
No parol or testimonial evidence is admissible and competent against the best evidence rule on the disquisitions and rulings as contained in the sole written documents, which are the ponencia or decisions and the dissenting opinions.
Now, truly, it is not only the Chief Justice who is on trial but the entire Supreme Court even as the testimonies of the Justices can be used against them in the threatened impeachment cases involving other Justices.
The enactment of a reproductive health law has more far-reaching benefits to the country than the current impeachment proceedings.
This was underscored recently by Rep. Edcel C. Lagman of Albay, principal author and sponsor of the RH bill, during the annual forum of the Foreign Correspondents Association in the Philippines (FOCAP) wherein he discussed the parallelisms and contrasts between the impeachment process and the reproductive health advocacy.
Both impeachment and RH receive extensive media coverage and social networking commentaries and have polarized the country like no other controversies.
The impeachment agenda, even presuming its nobility of purpose, has a limited impact on the lives of people, particularly on the poor, marginalized and disadvantaged who care less about high profile transgressions and more about the eradication of petty graft like those committed by kotong cops, market collectors and small-time bureaucrats who bedevil their daily existence.
On the other hand, the RH advocacy will save and uplift the lives of a multitude of women and children as maternal health is improved and infant mortality decreased, consistent with the Millennium Development Goals.
It is in this context that the President must employ the same, if not more, zeal and determination in having the RH bill enacted as he did and is doing to have the impeachment prosper.
He has the vast arsenal of power to convince his allies in Congress to fast track the enactment of a long-delayed legislation for the good of the greater number.
The President has prioritized the RH bill before the LEDAC and the Congress. But “prioritization” is not enough. Perforce, he must assure its immediate enactment by marshalling the resources and forces of his office.
While the impeachment of the Chief Justice is viewed by many as an insidious assault on the independence of the judiciary as a democratic institution, the passage of the RH bill will enhance human institutions, alleviate poverty and make sustainable human development achievable.
The impeachment process against the Chief Justice may result to a collateral damage to legislation and governance.
It appears that legislation, including the enactment of the RH bill, may be put in the back burner as congressional attention and energies are concentrated on the impeachment process.
Likewise, the implementation of national policies may be further stalled or temporized as the Aquino administration is consumed by an inordinate obsession to remove and replace the Chief Justice.
In contrast, the enactment of the RH bill optimizes governance as the government will be liberated from spreading too thinly limited resources to a ballooning population which may already have hit the 100 million mark.
The enactment of a comprehensive RH law, with adequate funding and willful implementation, will assure that important human development factors like quality education, adequate health care, full employment, stable food security, responsive mass housing and a robust environment will not remain impossible dreams.
Let the impeachment proceedings continue and end as warranted, but we must enact the RH bill without further delay because it will have more positive far-reaching and long range benefits to the Filipino nation.
Although Rep. Danilo Suarez has not garnered an incontestable absolute majority of minority members to replace me, I am resigning as Minority Leader to give way to former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s anointed one.
I likewise resign as Chairman and member of Lakas-CMD and as Vice President of the Centrist Democrats International (CDI), a worldwide organization of Christian and Muslim Democratic parties, of which Lakas-CMD is a member.
I will be an independent and will fiscalize the Aquino administration and continue to advocate progressive and alternative agenda.
My relation with some minority members who are closely allied with and beholden to Arroyo has become grossly untenable.
My resignation would also put a stop to the creeping signature campaign of the GMA-backed Suarez camp which has inordinately demeaned opposition members who had been relentlessly pressured to abandon their support for me despite their having signed in December 2011 a resolution entitled “To Maintain Rep. Edcel C. Lagman as Minority Leader” bearing the signatures of an absolute majority of the minority members.
I cannot continue serving a political aggrupation which deliberately refuses to recognize competent, militant and responsible leadership and would opt to follow blindly the importuning of former President Arroyo.
The insistence of Suarez on a term-sharing agreement for the minority leadership is contrived to deodorize my ouster which was finalized in Arroyo’s hospital suite at Veterans Memorial Medical Center in early January this year.
I shall explain fully my resignation on Tuesday, 24 January 2012, before the plenary.
The repeated incantations of Rep. Danilo Suarez that we had a term-sharing agreement for the minority leadership is a monotonous refrain.
Suarez has failed to prove the existence of said agreement except by his self-serving recollection which has been collaborated verbally by one or two of his supporters.
There was no such term-splitting arrangement. The news accounts in July 2010 documented that our term-sharing agreement was limited only to the Speakership in the event I won as the candidate of Lakas Kampi after Suarez withdrew his bid.
The claim of Suarez that he has obtained the endorsement of an absolute majority of 16 opposition members as the new minority leader is baseless.
He has not produced the uncontested and incontestable signatures to replace me because five of the signatories to his manifesto also signed the resolution retaining me as minority leader, and consequently their dual preferences are self-nullifying.
Moreover, two of the signatories to the Suarez manifesto are not qualified because they have already joined the Nationalista Party which is aligned with the majority coalition.
Additionally, Rep. Arthur Yap who was earlier reported to have phoned-in his adherence to the manifesto, called to say that he was remaining neutral.
Consequently, with the voiding of the contested signatures, Suarez has failed to obtain the absolute majority support of his opposition colleagues.
Any manifestation in the plenary about Suarez being the new minority leader is out of order.
The plenary is not the venue for threshing out disputes in the minority and the Rules provide that the Minority Leader can only be changed “by a majority of all the minority members.”
Whatever is happening or would be the result of the leadership intramurals in the minority, as principal author and sponsor of the RH bill, I am ready to defend to the hilt the measure and shepherd it through passage.
The advocates are ready and waiting for the remaining interpellators to stand up for the debates.
I call on the House leadership to prioritize the consideration of the RH bill and calendar it for daily plenary debates.
The impeachment proceedings should not be used to derail the passage of a long delayed legislation which will benefit the multitude of women and children.
