House junks bloggers’ intervention.

Fellow Quezon City residents: Junk Matias Defensor, Jr. in 2010! 

The first-ever affirmative action by Filipino bloggers has been killed by their so-called representatives.

Voting 35-4, the House Committee on Justice junked the motion filed by Manuel L. Quezon III, fellow FilipinoVoices bloggers Mark Ronald Rimorin, Patricio Mangubat and Arbet Bernardo et al that aims to include in the impeachment complaint filed by a group led by Joey de Venecia the aborted attempt by the Administration to balkanize the Philippines through its Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Everybody knows that the Supreme Court has since ruled that the foiled agreement was unconstitutional. Everyone and his girlfriend know that Gloria pushed for the scheme so she could maneuver for Charter change and rule beyond 2010. Even idiots know that it was an impeachable offense.

So, if Joey de Venecia et al were stupid enough not to have included this unthinkable act- which for me is the gravest thing a president, even one who’s bogus, could ever do- in their impeachment complaint; don’t you think every citizen has the right and the obligation to intervene include that act in that complaint?

As one prolific blogger said, if one accuses Pedro of killing, and somebody else accuses him of stealing the guy first before he killed him; robbery must be included in the case against Pedro. I’m not a lawyer, but I think this makes perfect sense.

Unfortunately for this Congress, procedural blah blah takes precedence over common sense.

The Committee Chair, Representative Matias Defensor, Jr. of Quezon City, unilaterally ruled that the bloggers’ intervention is a new case that falls already under the one-year constitutional ban on new impeachment complaints. He thinks that it “expands the issues” raised in the De Venecia complaint.

Now, I don’t know why an intervention should not be considered when it “expands the issue” of the complaint. Isn’t it the purpose of the intervention to “expand” De Venecia’s complaint by strenghtening its main grounds for impeachment– culpable violation of the Constitution and breach of oath– by citing and including in the complaint an instance where Gloria violated the Constitution and breached her oath?

According to a Law dictionary, to intervene is to become a party to a legal proceeding begun by others in order to protect an alleged interest in the subject matter of the proceeding. In this case, the bloggers intervened and became party to the impeachment proceeding begun by De Venecia et al to protect a common interest for all Filipinos: making sure that the rule of law prevails and that the President is made accountable for her corruption of the high office.

Had Defensor explained why this simple legal doctrine/analogy doesn’t apply to the blogger’s intervention, I would have forgiven him. But he didn’t.

And Defensor’s audacity didn’t end there. GMA reports that he even said that the issue raised by the bloggers is already moot because the government had not signed it before the Supreme Court rendered it unconstitutional.

The signing is irrelevant here. Heck, Esperon and company would have signed it anyway had the Supreme Court not released its TRO and the people not been angry about it. It was Arroyo’s intent to distribute parts of the Philippines’ territory to the enemies of state, keep it secret, lie to the Muslims and cause the deaths of many just so she could prolong her stay in Malacanang that is the culpable violation of the Constitution and the breach of her oath of office. 

You see, the kind of crap that came out of Defensor’s mouth in that hearing says a lot about this country’s Congress. The congressmen’s actions and behavior don’t help them change the public perception that they are either for sale or for rent.

Of course, that the blogger’s intervention would be crushed by these crooks doesn’t surprise me. What surprises me is that fact that not one of Mindanao’s fifty congressmen came out to support the intervention.

What the fuck, right? I thought they were equally angered by the attempted balkanization? Where are they now?