Congressmen from the majority bloc voted against the opposition's bid to tackle each allegation stated in the impeachment complaint against President Arroyo during the House Committee on Justice deliberation Tuesday.
The panel and its members voted 47-18 to junk the motion initiated by Parañaque Rep. Roilo Golez.
Minority Deputy Leader Alan Peter Cayetano had insisted that the committee should vote individually on each allegation before the votes were cast.
Cayetano cited the example of how courts study each piece of evidence and information on a case before releasing a decision.
Rep. Luis Villafuerte of Camarines Sur, a member of the administration bloc, meanwhile, reiterated that the committee should vote on the complaint's sufficiency in substance before tackling each allegation.
The allegations on the complaint were "chop suey," referring to a popular Filipino dish made from a mix of vegetable ingredients, he added. The congressman also said that the allegations were mixed in a disorganized manner.
He also said some of the allegations were recycled from the first impeachment complaint that the House junked last year.
The complaint filed in July this year accused the President of having committed culpable violation of the Constitution, corruption and betrayal of public trust.
Its proponents accused her of exercising "dictatorial powers to suppress the lawful exercise of the people’s right to free speech, expression, assembly, free press and information in connection with and the legislative power to inquire on, matters relating to or affecting the legitimacy of her presidency."
The alleged culpable violations of the Constitution referred to the "patently illegal and blatantly unconstitutional issuances" such as Executive Order 464, Presidential Proclamation 1017 and the calibrated preemptive response, which were all struck down by the Supreme Court.
These directives, the complainants said, were intended "to prevent investigations into her criminal acts, to suppress freedom of the press, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and to prevent the people’s exercise of the right to petition the government for redress of their grievances."
The allegations also included the controversial "Hello, Garci" recordings in which the President is accused of manipulating the 2004 election results. It also accused the President of being involved in the switching of ballot boxes containing town-level tallies of votes that happened sometime in January-February 2005 at the House of Representatives
Also included is the President’s "illegal" use of P4 billion to P6 billion of public funds to promote her candidacy. The President was alleged to have used and disbursed illegally the 2003 and 2004 budget allocations of the deactivated Southern Philippines Development Authority and the streamlined National Electrification Administration for her presidential campaign fund and "to unlawfully promote her 2004 candidacy."
The complaint also accused her of having "illegally used and disbursed the road users’ tax and the fertilizer funds under the so-called Ginintuang Masaganang Ani program for the presidential campaign and unlawfully promoting her 2004 presidential candidacy."
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryID=47439
Majority Junks Minority Bid on Impeac Rap 47-18
Originally Posted by kamikaze426
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