Palace: New impeach raps 'exercise in superfluity'

A senior Malacañang official has branded the second impeachment complaint filed by former Vice President Teofisto Guingona Jr as an “exercise in superfluity" and further dared the President's critics to gather five million signatures to demonstrate people’s support for the move. “The second impeachment complaint filed by former VP Guingona is an exercise in superfluity whose legal and political value simply eludes us. Redundant as it is, the additional complaint should be no cause for anxiety at all for the administration," Gabriel Claudio, presidential adviser on political affairs, said Tuesday. Claudio also dared complainants to gather signatures that compare with the claimed 10 million signatures gathered by the Sigaw ng Bayan group to amend the Constitution. "The Charter change movement, which the overwhelming majority of congressmen support, gathered 10 million signatures for a people's initiative. That's a tough act to follow," Claudio said. "If the pro-impeachment groups can gather even half of that number, then maybe congressmen can be impressed." He claimed the filing of the Guingona petition “reveals the complainants' paucity of valid issue and legal strategies against the President." Some 200 private complainants filed a similar complaint Monday, accusing President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo with culpable violation of the Constitution, graft and corruption and abuse of authority. The complaints filed by civil society leaders and Guingona were “similar in content" and contained the same allegations against the President. Only the names of the petitioners were different. Guingona has said he made the move in response to claims by lawyer Oliver Lozano that the second impeachment complaint submitted Monday would still be covered by the one-year ban on filing complaints. Lozano has said he filed the first impeachment complaint against the President on June 27 last year, not June 26 as assumed by the private complainants. The first impeachment complaint leveled against Mrs. Arroyo was junked by the House of Representatives in September last year.-GMANews.TV