5 GMA House allies sign impeach complaint

The impeachment complaint against President Arroyo garnered five additional signatures on Tuesday surprisingly from prominent pro-administration congressmen, ABS-CBN News reported.

This, after Representatives Gilbert Remulla of Cavite, Robert Ace Barbers of Surigao del Norte, Edmund Reyes of Marinduque, Robert Jaworski Jr. of Pasig, and Renato Magtubo of the Partido ng Manggagawa Party-list, signed the impeachment complaint even as they reiterate that they were not shifting alliance but that they were only after the truth.

"All we want is for truth to come out, and the only way that we can ferret out the truth on all the issues hurled against the President is the impeachment proceedings," Reyes said.

Reyes, Barbers and Jaworski are members of the ruling Lakas-CMD, while Remulla, who is also the chairman of the House committee on public information, is a member of the Nacionalista Party which is considered a strong ally of the so-called Sunshine Coalition of Speaker Jose de Venecia.

Lakas stalwart Rep. Prospero Pichay said the House majority respects the decision of Remulla, Reyes, Barbers, Jaworski and Magtubo.

With the five administration lawmakers, the impeachment complaint now has 48 signatures, or 31 short of the 79 signatures needed to impeach the President and allow its automatic transmission to the Senate for trial.

In a quickly called press conference, the five congressmen made the announcement as they expressed disgust over the way the House committee on justice ended its hearing earlier Tuesday, which they said was not threading the road to truth.

The impeachment complaint against President Arroyo suffered its first setback after pro-administration congressmen voted to tackle first the prejudicial questions before the House committee on justice determines the sufficiency in form and substance of three impeachment complaints against President Arroyo.

Fifty-four congressmen voted yes to the motion of Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman on whether to tackle the prejudicial questions. Twenty-four lawmakers, mostly from the minority, voted no to the motion while there were three abstentions including that of chairman Simeon Datumanong of Maguindanao.

Reyes said there seems to be an attempt to subvert the impeachment proceedings, by preventing the amended impeachment complaint, which in effect is a way to subvert the truth.

He said that trashing the amended complaint can be likened to the second envelope, which people took as a suppression of truth and consequently triggered the People Power uprising that ousted President Joseph Estrada in 2001.

Citing the opinion of constitutionalist Fr. Joaquin Bernas, Reyes said that there should not be an argument on whether or not to accept the amended complaint filed against the President, because what the Constitution prevents was the initiation of "more than one impeachment proceedings" and not "more than one impeachment complaint" against a government official within a year.

The House committee on justice is set to tackle which of the three impeachment complaints to pursue against Mrs. Arroyo, who is accused of betraying the public trust and of rigging the 2004 elections, among other allegations.

The committee has to resolve which of the following complaints to act on: the original complaint of Oliver Lozano, the one prepared by Jose Rizalino Lopez and the opposition’s amended version of the Lozano complaint.

Earlier, Taguig-Pateros Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano admitted that the vote spelled an initial setback to the pro-impeachment movement. "The problem is that when you deal with three or more prejudicial questions that they brought up, there are more prejudicial questions to that," he said.

Cayetano said lawmakers have different interpretation of the law and rule of procedures, which may drag the impeachment proceedings against the President.

"We're trying to get to the root of this but instead of taking the shortcut, we're taking the long way that may lead us to places we don't want to go," he said.

Lagman earlier motioned that seven prejudicial questions listed on the agenda of the July 16 hearing be taken up first. He said the prejudicial questions can be summarized into three questions.

Minority Leader Francis Escudero of Sorsogon objected to Lagman's motion.

The questions themselves will be formulated after the vote.

In an earlier statement, Akbayan party-list Rep. Loretta Ann Rosales scored Lagman's move, saying, "The prejudicial question is a Trojan horse meant to kill the impeachment."

She added that Lagman is a "close ally" of the President.

Among the bones of contention among pro-impeachment and pro-administration congressmen is the interpretation of Article 11 Section 3, Paragraph 5 of the 1987 Constitution that prevents the initiation of more than one impeachment proceedings against a government official within a year.