‘Constituent assembly without the Senate is usurpation of authority’
The constitutional amendments being pushed by the administration camp at the House of Representatives will make impeachment impossible, the spokesperson of a broad-based group of lawyers, paralegals, and law students says. He also said convening Congress into a constituent assembly to amend or revise the Constitution without the Senate is tantamount to usurpation of authority – a criminal offense under the Revised Penal Code.
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
The constitutional amendments being pushed by the administration camp at the House of Representatives will make impeachment impossible, said the spokesman of a broad-based group of lawyers, paralegals, and law students. He also said convening Congress into a constituent assembly to amend or revise the Constitution without the Senate is tantamount to usurpation of authority – a criminal offense under the Revised Penal Code.
Lawyer Neri Javier Colmenares, spokesperson of the Counsels for the Defense of Liberties (CODAL), was referring to the proposed amendment creating a Commission on Impeachment from among the members of the unicameral Parliament that would replace the present bicameral Congress.
Under the proposed amendments – of which Bulatlat received a copy courtesy of the office of Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) Rep. Rafael Mariano, a member of the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments – the Parliament would be led by a prime minister to be elected by the members from among themselves. Members of Parliament are to be elected mainly by district and region, and shall have no term limits. Twenty percent of the seats allotted to regional and district members are to be occupied by members representing party-list groups and sectoral organizations.
Commission on Impeachment
The proposed amendment creating the Commission on Impeachment provides that:
There shall be a Commission on Impeachment composed of fifteen Members of Parliament chosen on the basis of proportional representation of the Parties therein. It shall have the sole power of impeachment by a majority vote of all its Members. The Parliament shall try all impeachment cases elevated to it, and a vote of at least two-thirds of all the Members shall be necessary to convict on impeachment.
“You cannot become a prime minister unless you’re elected by a majority of the Parliament,” Colmenares told Bulatlat. “That means if you’re the prime minister, you have the majority in the Commission on Impeachment. So you’d never be impeached. The proportionality issue there is a problem. The prime minister has the majority in Parliament, he can never be impeached.”
“That’s a formula for unaccountability,” added the CODAL spokesperson, who has taken doctoral units in Law at the University of Melbourne. “Their impeachment rule is very disastrous and is really not conducive to accountability.”
Asked whether he thought the proposed creation of a Commission on Impeachment as a parliamentary body is a reaction of the administration camp to the political crisis that sprang from the 2004 elections and the two failed attempts at impeaching President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at the House, Colmenares replied in the affirmative. “It’s designed to ensure that the prime minister will not be impeached,” he said.
