Makati Business Club, MAP join call for SC to reverse ruling on Sara’s impeachment

The country’s most influential business organizations, Makati Business Club (MBC) and Management Association of the Philippines (MAP), have joined legal and judicial advocates in calling on the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the House of Representatives’ appeal to reverse its decision declaring the Articles of Impeachment against Vice President Sara Duterte as unconstitutional.

“We join a nation hopeful that the Supreme Court shall steadfastly resume its role in defending the Constitution that the Filipino people have ratified at a pivotal time in our history,” the MBC, MAP, Integrity Initiative, and Justice Reform Initiative said in a joint statement on Friday.

“We beg the Court to guard against the erosion of the constitutional design that can set aside the people’s sovereign will. Our fidelity must always be to the principle that no one stands above the Constitution, and no government official is supreme over the Filipino people they are sworn to faithfully serve,” the groups said.

The House has filed a motion for reconsideration asking the high court to reverse its ruling junking the impeachment case against the Vice President, saying it should be allowed to perform its exclusive duty to prosecute an impeachable official, and the Senate's to try the case.

In its appeal before the high tribunal, the House argued that the fourth impeachment complaint, signed off by 215 House members, is the only initiated impeachment case against the Vice President because it met the Constitutional requirement of the complaint being endorsed by at least one-third of the House members, which allowed the House to transmit the Articles of Impeachment straight to the Senate en route to the impeachment trial, bypassing Committee deliberations.

Voting 13-0, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously, deeming that the Articles of Impeachment are barred by the one-year rule under Article XI Section 3 paragraph 5 of the Constitution. Moreover, the magistrates ruled that the articles violate the right to due process.

The MBC, MAP, Integrity Initiative, and Justice Reform Initiative said the “decision of the [Supreme] Court as it stands sends a dangerous signal throughout the bureaucracy that abuse of power and corruption carry no consequence.”

“If we fail to hold the highest officials of the land accountable, how can we expect accountability from those below them?”

The groups argued that the appeal filed by the lower chamber “merits reconsideration,” due to the following:

“Deemed Initiated” is not in the Constitution

One-year bar not triggered

Venue for due process is specific

Impeachment is to protect the people

The groups explained that the high court treated the first three complaints as “deemed dismissed” triggering the one-year bar for the initiation of the next impeachment, but, in effect, “treated the first three complaints (counted as one) as ‘deemed initiated’ as well.”

“For how can there be a succeeding impeachment initiation to bar if the first has not even been initiated? This deeming effect rests on no Constitutional text because whenever the charter desires that legal effect, it states so expressly, such as on: who are  ‘deemed natural-born citizens’ (Article IV, Section 2) ; who are ‘deemed to have renounced citizenship’ (Article IV, Section 4); ‘deemed re-enacted’ budget (Article VI, Section 25[7]); ‘deemed certified’ special election bill (Article VII, Section 10); ‘deemed submitted for decision’ (Article VIII, Section 15[2]; Article IX, Section 7); ‘deemed lifted’ freeze order (Article XVIII, Section 26[3]),” the groups said.

“If the framers of the Constitution intended that inaction by the House shall make an impeachment ‘deemed initiated,’ it would have been so indicated like the rest of the provisions above stated,” they added.

With this, the groups said the Supreme Court, in its decision has said that “complaints not properly endorsed by a member of the House within a reasonable period, even if dismissed, does not trigger the one-year bar.”

They said that, “in the same breath, the Court deems inaction by the House as a dismissal that triggers the one-year bar.”

“This, we submit, stands in tension with the Court’s own reasoning: in both cases, the House did not act and yet there are different legal effects.”

The MBC, MAP, Integrity Initiative, and Justice Reform Initiative said, moreover, said that the “venue for due process is specific” as “impeachment is neither a criminal nor administrative proceeding,” adding that “it is a sui generis process for which the Constitution provides specific venues for due process: in the Committee on Justice for the first mode of impeachment (by verified complaint endorsed by a member of the House); or at the Senate Trial for the second mode (Impeachment by direct resolution transmitted to the Senate).”

“The Senate by stopping the impeachment initiated through the second mode, and the Court by its decision in this case as it stands, unfortunately prevented due process from happening,” the groups said.

The groups further said that “impeachment is to protect the people,” citing the Article XI, “Accountability of Public Officers”, of the Constitution which provides that the impeachment process exists to serve the public and “not to shield a government official from the rigors of defending himself or herself, but to safeguard the people’s right to demand accountability from those who wield authority supposedly on their behalf.”

The groups stressed that “without accountability, the government loses trust.”

The MBC, MAP, Integrity Initiative, and Justice Reform Initiative said that if the high court’s ruling is “uncorrected,” it “will institutionalize the flaws in our rule of law.”

“The impact is not only political, it’s also economic. When investor confidence retracts, when costs of doing business rise, when the supply chain struggles, invariably, it’s the consumers, the people, who will pay the price.  Everyone needlessly suffers - as our history as a nation repeatedly taught us,” the groups said. — BAP, GMA Integrated News