Was House OSG right in refusing new impeach raps?
Lawmakers on Friday were split on whether the House of Representatives has given the Office of the Secretary General (OSG) too much discretion in the impeachment process, after two attempts to file fresh complaints against President Marcos were scuttled by the absence of the secretariat’s chief.
Deputy Minority Leader and Mamamayang Liberal Rep. Leila de Lima reminded the OSG that the receipt of impeachment complaints “is a ministerial act” and that House officials did not have the discretion to delay or reject filings.
“The legitimacy of impeachment depends not only on outcomes, but on the integrity of the process by which it is conducted,” she said. “Administrative inconvenience or technical excuses cannot suspend a constitutional mandate.”
Her statement comes after the progressive coalition Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) and a group led by former Rep. Michael Defensor and former Ilocos Norte Gov. Chavit Singson sought to file additional impeachment complaints against Mr. Marcos on Wednesday.
‘Weak’
Both complaints accuse the President of betrayal of public trust in relation to the multibillion-peso flood control scandal now hounding his administration.
Bayan and the Defensor-Singson group filed the new complaints because, in their view, the first one filed by lawyer Andre de Jesus was weak both in form and in substance.
However, Executive Director Jose Marmoi Salonga declined to accept the complaints, saying he had no authority to receive them on behalf of Secretary General Cheloy Garafil.
Garafil was in Taipei on Thursday to receive an award from Taiwan’s foreign ministry in relation to her previous post as chair of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office. She was set to return to the country on Sunday.
De Jesus’ complaint has been transmitted to the Speaker’s office as of Wednesday. Should it be included in the order of business and referred to the House committee on justice when Congress resumes session on Monday, subsequent complaints would now be barred for one year.
House’s responsibility
House Majority Leader and Ilocos Norte Rep. Ferdinand Alexander Marcos, on the other hand, said the lower chamber would not block and will properly act on any impeachment complaint.
Speaking for the first time since his father became the subject of impeachment, Rep. Marcos said it was the plenary’s responsibility to refer complaints to the committee on justice after they have been included in the calendar of business and read in plenary.
He stressed that the House must hear and consider any impeachment complaint—even if it involves his own father—and that it is expected to act without prejudice and in accordance with established procedures.
Assistant Majority Leader and Lanao del Sur Rep. Zia Alonto Adiong echoed this view saying that Garafil’s absence “does not affect the constitutional handling of impeachment matters.”
One-year ban
“Impeachment is a serious constitutional mechanism,” Adiong said. “The House will continue to discharge its duties in an orderly, rules-based, and transparent manner.”
Under the House rules of procedure, any impeachment complaint should be filed before the OSG, which should be immediately referred to the Speaker.
De Lima and the three-member Makabayan bloc that was supposed to endorse the Bayan complaint argued that the said rule does not explicitly state that Garafil herself must receive the complaint.
The rules further state that the Speaker “shall have it included in the Order of Business within ten session days from receipt.” The committee on rules should then refer it to the committee on justice within three session days.
Referral to the committee on rules means that the impeachment proceeding has been initiated, triggering the one-year ban.
Unlike the first impeachment complaint filed by De Jesus, which cited multiple news reports rather than present evidence, the impeachment complaint lodged by Bayan hinges on one policy that was originally named after the President but later recast as the making of the late Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Undersecretary Catalina Cabral: the so-called allocables formula.
Known as the Cabral formula, the “baseline balanced managed” (BBM) parametric formula crafted during the first year of the Marcos administration serves as Bayan’s “smoking gun” that the President oversaw the systematic plunder of public funds and therefore culpable of betrayal of public trust.
Extraordinary candor
“The objective of this scheme was twofold and mutually reinforcing: Massive personal enrichment for the president and his inner circle, and the accumulation of an illicit ‘war chest’ for the 2025 National Elections,” Bayan said in its complaint.
The bloc cited official documents from the DPWH which states: “Moreover, considering that the national budget is an economic, political and legal tool of the national government all at the same time, the DPWH BBM Allocation Formula should be able to take into account higher considerations in decision-making, beyond engineering and economic development of DPWH. Priorities of the leaders of the national government and the legislature will also be considered in this matter.”
“This language is extraordinary in its candor. Rather than using euphemisms, the document explicitly acknowledges that ‘priorities of leaders’ (meaning individual powerful officials, not institutional mandates or public welfare considerations) would override the technical, parameter-based allocations produced by the formula’s supposedly objective first two stages,” the group added.
It argued that this basically proved that the formula was “pork barrel by design” and that previous revelations by whistleblowers in past congressional inquiries “should therefore be seen in this light.”
“The alleged submissions of project proposals by the President, cabinet officials, as well as leaders of the House and Senate are not anomalous interventions but routine implementations of the policy,” it added.
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