By Amado P. Macasaet
What the brains behind it believe to be a great show may not attract the expected crowd. “Crowd” in this sense is the House of Representatives which will act on an impeachment complaint against President Aquino which has not even been filed as far as we know.
The people who demand the ouster of the President know only too well that impeachment is a political trial, not exactly decided by the weight of evidence.
In the first place, impeachment complaints are filed based on culpable violation of the Constitution by the President.
We know nothing of such violation although the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Disbursement Acceleration Program is unconstitutional.
President Aquino disbursed around P150 billion in savings he pooled to create a huge fund that is not in the General Appropriations Act.
Maybe this offense indeed violates the Constitution. Will this violation convince the House of Representatives to draw up an article of impeachment that will be forwarded to the Senate for the impeachment trial of President Aquino? I think not.
The first hurdle is getting the justice committee of the House to make a decision that the President violated the Constitution.
Before the complaint reaches the committee, the House should vote whether the complaint should be entertained.
I do not believe the House will give the vote. If it does not, the complaint dies in the waters.
The fact that the President continues to enjoy the support of his constituents as shown by the most recent survey made by the Social Weather Stations will scare the members of the House, particularly those seeking re-election in 2016 from giving the vote.
That vote can spell doom in their re-election bid. Granting that is not so, the politicians are intelligent enough to feel the pulse of the people.
They are for President Aquino although his rating is below that of Vice President Binay.
It matters a lot that the President and Binay are not in an open war in politics.
Binay is intelligent enough not to tangle with a popular president. That is one of the reasons his rating is higher than the Chief Executive.
The members of the House of Representatives know as much. They would not vote for the impeachment of the President.
Again granting, without admitting, that a vote to impeach can be had from majority of the congressmen, will two-thirds of the senators vote for the conviction of the President? I think not.
It is important to recall that Erap Estrada would have been acquitted in his impeachment trial. He had the numbers in the Senate (as shown by the vote on the so-called second envelope).
It is in recognition of the that reality that the impeachment Court presided by then Chief Justice Davide allowed the court to be brought to the streets in a rally supported by Gloria Arroyo and a few powerful businessmen who did not like the way Estrada was running his government.
The Supreme Court threw out Erap using the theory of “constructive resignation.”
The Senate made a mockery of the impeachment trial. Nothing proves better that impeachment is a political trial than the side-lining of the Senate of the trial of Erap.
President Aquino violated the Constitution with the pooling of savings that in turn became the Disbursement Acceleration Program.
The means does not justify the end. Still, the people do not find fault in the President illegally using the DAP.
They know that President Aquino did not pocket a cent of the money. Or there is no proof that he did.
There is probable cause that three senators and many more officials of government personally benefited from their pork barrel through a scheme drawn up by Janet Lim Napoles.
Otherwise the Office of the Ombudsman would not file plunder information against them.
There is a big wide world between what is described as theft of pork money allocated to the lawmakers in the General Appropriations Act and the disbursement of the savings by President Aquino.
The presumption, in fact belief, of the people is that the President used the savings for the benefit of his country and people.
If impeachment were not a political trial, the evidence against President Aquino in the use of savings is abundantly clear. In fact, the Supreme Court ruled the DAP is unconstitutional.
But the Highest Tribunal did not say much about the guilt or innocence of the President in disbursing around P150 billion of DAP funds.
There is a remarkable difference between the declaration of unconstitutionality of the DAP and how it was used by the President although the DAP money is not in the General Appropriations Act.
It is a source of comfort that the President does not have control over the Supreme Court.
But as it now appears he has the support of the Legislature. In that sense the impeachment plan will never prosper.
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