Impeachment complaint vs. Aquino over DAP filed

Militant group Bayan and 27 other complainants filed an impeachment complaint against President Noynoy Aquino at the House of Representatives over the Disbursement Acceleration Program.

It is the first impeachment complaint that was endorsed by a sitting member of Congress, Bayan Muna Representative Neri Colmenares.

Colmenares has alleged the family of President Aquino is among the main beneficiaries of the controversial program.

He said, the Department of Agrarian Reform itself admitted that in October 2011, P7.9B was released to the Landbank and P5.4B of that came from DAP.

He added that from 2011 to June 2014, Landbank disbursed P4B in compensation to more than 4,000 landowners whose lands were distributed to farmer-beneficiaries of the Agrarian Reform Program. 
    
Among those landowners, he says, is the Cojuangco family who owns Hacienda Luisita.

Impeachment process

Once filed, a complaint, if endorsed by a congressman, will be referred to the plenary for referral to the justice committee. The justice committee will then deliberate on it to determine sufficiency in form, substance and probable cause. The respondent will be allowed to respond.

If it hurdles all these tests, the complaint will be sponsored in plenary. If it garners the votes of 97 congressmen or a third of the 290-member House, the complaint will transmitted to the Senate for trial.

(NOTE: A shorter route is to have the 1/3 vote at the time of filing in which case the complaint will be automatically referred to the Senate for trial, and the prosecutors will be elected.)

Only the President, Vice President, the 15 justices of the Supreme Court, the Ombudsman and the heads of the constitutional commissions are impeachable.

Impeachment advocates concede Aquino’s allies could give them a hard time with the impeachment. Aquino allies dominate the majority of both houses of Congress.

If ever, Aquino will be the 3rd president subjected to impeachment proceedings after Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

One Ombudsman, Merceditas Gutierrez, and two chief justices, Hilario Davide and Renato Corona, were also subjected to impeachment.

Only the Estrada and Corona impeachment cases went to trial before the Senate. Davide’s impeachment complaint did not muster enough votes in the Lower House while Gutierrez resigned before trial.

Aquino’s allies are expected to use their numbers to crush the impeachment, the way they did in the impeachment cases against Arroyo.