MANILA, Philippines - Vice President Leni Robredo has no hand in the impeachment complaint filed against President Duterte in the House of Representatives, her spokesperson said yesterday.
In separate interviews, Georgina Hernandez said it was the initiative of Magdalo Rep. Gary Alejano, who also clarified that the Vice President had nothing to do with the impeachment case against Duterte.
Alejano on Thursday filed the impeachment complaint, accusing the President of culpable violation of the Constitution, engaging in bribery, betrayal of public trust, graft and corruption, and other high crimes.
“The Vice President has nothing to do with this. In fact, she has not seen the complaint and she believes that she should not meddle with this issue,” Hernandez said in Filipino.
Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, however, maintained he sees Robredo’s direct hand in the filing of impeachment complaint against the President.
Alvarez said Robredo is the one who will benefit once Duterte is removed from office.
Malacañang, for its part, has described the filing of an impeachment complaint against Duterte as a “dramatic” part of a “larger scheme of things” to destabilize the administration.
“To those who try to link the Vice President to the alleged destabilization plot, there is no truth on this as the Vice President respects the mandate of the President,” Hernandez said.
Other lawmakers, however, belittled the impeachment complaint.
“It’s an exercise in futility, given his overwhelming support not only in the Congress but from the Filipino people as well,” Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte said.
“Given that the impeachment process is a numbers game, it is wishful thinking on the part of the President’s critics that they could even reach first base in impeachment proceedings in the House,” he said.
“My peers in the House are politically astute enough to realize that no impeachment complaint will gain traction among the people, considering the President’s record public trust and satisfaction ratings as reflected in tracking polls,” he said.
Villafuerte added he and his colleagues “could better spend our time crafting reform laws that would help President Duterte achieve his government’s ambitious goal of sustaining the growth momentum, drastically reducing poverty and transforming our country into an upper middle-income economy by the time his term ends in 2022.”
A ranking Church official said the filing of impeachment case against Duterte was a good move but doubted it would prosper.
“I think this is a good move because it signals the seriousness of the situation of the violation of human rights in our country, which has become notorious throughout the whole world,” Sorsogon Bishop Arturo Bastes said.
Bastes said impeaching a sitting president is a political act and would only succeed if it gains the support of one-third of members of the House of Representatives.
“Of course impeachment is a political action and since the majority in Congress is pro-Duterte, the move for impeachment cannot prosper,” he said.
Bastes said the effort would not go to waste since it could be used later in the event a case against Duterte is filed before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The positive effect of the impeachment, although it has minimal chance, is that the whole world knows that some lawgivers of the Philippines are very concerned with the strange behavior and stubborn attitude of our President, who thinks that killing criminals, who are ‘not human,’ is the only way to keep peace in our nation,” he said.
South Cotabato Bishop Dinualdo Gutierres added the filing of an impeachment case against Duterte was a “good try” but also believes it would not prosper.