MANILA, Philippines – Embattled Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez is ready to face trial once the House of Representatives votes and transmits the articles of impeachment to the Senate next week.
Calling the proceedings at the House committee on justice a “moro-moro (sham),” the Ombudsman said she has no plans of appearing before the panel on Tuesday because no less than the chairman of the House justice committee, Iloilo Rep. Niel Tupas, has an axe to grind against her.
“It’s up to them (congressmen) and I am ready to face trial in the Senate,” Gutierrez told reporters during the weekly Kapihan sa Sulo news forum in Quezon City.
But Tupas said Gutierrez has to appear before the committee on justice of the House of Representatives on Tuesday.
“She has to personally appear before us to affirm her statements in the 50-page document she submitted on Friday. Otherwise, it’s just a mere scrap of paper,” he said.
He said under the rules of the committee, a respondent has to affirm her answers to or statements regarding the impeachment complaints against her.
“However, I am inclined to relax the application of the rules of procedure,” he added.
Gutierrez said her lawyer has already sent his reply to the charges against her, even as she had consistently accused the House committee on justice of already making a conclusion and disregarding their own rules to hasten the proceedings without giving her a chance to air her side.
“I was denied my right to due process, their objective is to railroad the process” Gutierrez said.
She said the impeachment is a “farce” and is actually an act of revenge by some members of Congress who are facing anti-graft charges before her office, emphasizing that Rep. Tupas and his father, the former governor, are both facing charges.
Because of this, she said Tupas should have inhibited himself because there is a conflict of interest involved in the impeachment process.
“I feel this is vengeance,” she said, insisting that she was never remiss in her duties.
The die is cast
But committee members said the presence of the Ombudsman’s lawyer and his involvements in discussions in last Tuesday’s hearing amounted to her participation in the impeachment proceedings.
Last week, the justice committee gave Gutierrez until last Monday to submit her answers to the complaints, but she failed to comply with the deadline.
On Tuesday, before the committee voted to find sufficient ground to impeach her, her lawyer asked that the deadline be extended up to Friday. The committee refused the request but told the lawyer they could file an answer, which would be treated as the Ombudsman’s pleadings.
“As agreed in the last hearing, these pleadings would be treated as part of the documentary evidence and technically not answers since the time to file an answer has already expired and a general denial (of the charges) has already been entered (by the committee for the Ombudsman),” Tupas said.
In her pleadings, Gutierrez denied that she has been sitting on several high-profile cases pending with her office, including those related to the P728-million fertilizer fund scam and the botched $329-million national broadband network (NBN) contract the Arroyo administration awarded to Chinese firm ZTE Corp. in April 2007.
She said the fact that these cases have been pending for years does not constitute a violation of the Constitution and a ground for impeachment.
An appointee of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the Ombudsman said her job as government prosecutor includes choosing not to file charges in court against the accused.
She asked the justice committee to dismiss the impeachment complaints against her.
High-ranking Arroyo administration officials are among the respondents in the fertilizer fund scam and NBN-ZTE cases. Former first gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo was linked to the NBN-ZTE controversy, but Gutierrez has cleared him. The two were Ateneo law classmates.
Bargaining chips
The Ombudsman’s pronouncement that she would not attend Tuesday’s hearing came on the heels of Tupas’ revelation that she had asked him to go easy on the impeachment proceedings against her.
The Iloilo representative revealed in an interview on ABS-CBN’s “Umagang Kay Ganda” program that Overall Deputy Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro visited his office in September last year to convey such request.
He said the visit took place shortly after the justice committee found the two impeachment complaints against Gutierrez sufficient in form and substance.
According to him, Casimiro was accompanied by Deputy Special Prosecutor Roberto Kallos.
Tupas said Casimiro told him that Gutierrez was willing to help his father, former Gov. Niel Tupas Sr., on condition that the justice committee chairman would go soft on the Ombudsman.
He said Casimiro told him that the graft case against his father, which arose from the issuance of a quarrying permit to a contractor, was weak. Tupas said he immediately turned down the deputy Ombudsman’s request.
Belmonte: House will impeach Merci
Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. told ABS-CBN News Channel on Monday night that he believed his chamber would obtain the required one-third vote of all members (94 votes) to send the charges against the Ombudsman to the Senate for trial.
If it musters the necessary vote, the House under Belmonte will make history for impeaching the Ombudsman.
In November 2000, the chamber made history by voting to impeach then President Estrada.
Asked if he and his colleagues could deliver the needed number of votes, Belmonte said, “Yes, we can. We have a large coalition in the House.”
However, he stressed that there would be no party or coalition stand on the impeachment of Gutierrez.
“Each member will be free to vote according to his conscience,” he said.
source: philstar
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