OPPOSITION / WHO'S AFRAID TO AX GMA?
MANILA, APRIL 24, 2012
(INQUIRER) By Maila Ager - Senate
Minority Leader Alan Cayetano on Monday urged the Aquino administration to stop
labeling members of the opposition as "pro-Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo."
Arroyo is former President and now Pampanga Representative Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo, who is under hospital arrest in Quezon City for the
non-bailable charge of electoral sabotage.
Cayetano pointed out that the pro-GMA (Arroyo's initial) faction represents
only one opposition group out of the many that form the opposition bloc.
"In a multi-party system, that's not accurate. GMA is one opposition group.
Many anti-GMA politicians also belong to the opposition," the senator said in a
statement.
Cayetano said the logic that "If you're with Arroyo, you are with the
opposition. And if you're with Noynoy, you're with the administration" only
exacerbates existing political conflicts in the country.
"If you look at the news, first it was only the Liberal Party (LP) and the
Partidong Demokratikong Pilipino (PDP) that spoke out against each other. Now,
even some allegedly part of the GMA group is saying that many pro-GMA
politicians are now serving under the Aquino administration," he said.
Cayetano noted that indeed many incumbent government officials were former
allies of Arroyo.
"This is how politics works in our country. But if the President wants this
to change, we will engage him in that," said the senator.
Lawmakers: Who's afraid to ax Arroyo? By Gil C.
Cabacungan Jr. Philippine Daily Inquirer 12:59 am | Monday, April 23rd, 2012
Two lawmakers have wondered why President Benigno Aquino III's allies
were suddenly gun-shy about suspending former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
from the House of Representatives after they had acted so swiftly to impeach
Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez and Chief Justice Renato Corona.
Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) party-list Representative Antonio Tinio
said the President should mobilize his allies in the House to suspend Arroyo,
now a representative from Pampanga, "to serve as a test of this administration's
commitment to prosecute the former president without wavering and without
compromise."
"The swift impeachment of Chief Justice Corona has shown that Malacañang can
muster the numbers in the name of its anticorruption campaign," Tinio said.
Aquino allies in the House signed in less than a day an impeachment complaint
against Corona after the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order on
an administrative travel ban imposed on Arroyo.
Bayan Muna party-list Representative Neri Colmenares said there was no reason
for the House not to heed the appeal of the Office of the Ombudsman which,
through its Special Prosecutor, filed last week a petition asking the
Sandiganbayan's Fourth Division to suspend Arroyo as the representative of
Pampanga's second district pending the resolution of a case against her in the
controversial $329-million National Broadband Network-ZTE deal during her term.
"I think anybody can be suspended in Congress as long as there is a
two-thirds vote," said Colmenares. Both Colmenares and Tinio belong to the
administration coalition.
Current and former allies of Arroyo have come out to contest the calls for
her suspension. Maguindanao Representative Simeon Datumanong said that under the
Constitution, only Congress with two-thirds of its members voting, could decide
on the suspension of one of its members.
Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II said the House would defy the
Sandiganbayan should it grant the Ombudsman's appeal to suspend Arroyo.
In a phone interview, Cagayan de Oro Representative Rufus Rodriguez said that
suspending one of the members involved a process which would start with a
complaint filed in the ethics committee. Since Arroyo's pending cases involved
her actions as the former president, Rodriguez said the ethics committee had no
jurisdiction over her case.
Rodriguez also said that Congress could only act on cases that have been
decided with finality by the Supreme Court, noting that a Sandiganbayan ruling
was still subject to an appeal in the high court.
Only 25 behind her
The lower house has 286 members and only 191 votes would be required to
suspend Arroyo, who has less than 25 members still behind her.
Tinio noted that House leaders had been boasting about getting more than the
188 signatures needed to impeach Corona in December and that they had even
formed a Movement 188 to show their unity.
This was why Tinio found it perplexing that the majority coalition would be
hesitant to take direct aim at the main target of past impeachments.
"Gloria Arroyo took the unprecedented step, as a sitting president, of
running for and securing a congressional seat precisely so that she could avail
of the institutional privileges and protection of the House once she left
Malacañang. The suspension of Rep. Gloria Arroyo is a political, not legal,
matter to be decided by votes on the floor rather than the citation of rules. In
so doing, the House will send out the message that it will not provide sanctuary
to the principal perpetrator of electoral sabotage, graft and corruption, and
human rights violations under the previous administration," said Tinio.
Arroyo has denied all the charges against her.
Rather switch than fight
The Liberal Party-led coalition in the House includes former Arroyo allies
who had switched to the ruling party or formed the new National Unity Party. But
Colmenares said their previous links were not enough to explain why they would
be reluctant to suspend Arroyo. "I believe that they are afraid of setting a
precedent in Congress and effectively ending its status as a sanctuary for
criminals," he said.
The six-page petition of acting Prosecution Bureau IV Director Rabendranath
Uy argued that suspension was mandatory for officials facing valid graft
charges. Arroyo is currently under hospital detention for a nonbailable offense,
electoral sabotage. The Department of Justice and the Commission on Elections
accused her of manipulating the results of the 2007 senatorial elections in
Mindanao.
Chief News Editor: Sol
Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE
NEWS ONLINE
All rights reserved
PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS
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