House members to endorse new impeach bid

MANILA, Philippines – Iloilo vice governor Rolex Suplico, one of the complainants in the new impeachment complaint against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, on Saturday challenged House members to support the move. This he made after former Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. finally announced his support for the impeach bid. “Now that De Venecia announced his intention to endorse the impeachment complaint, I urge House members to endorse it as well," said the vice governor in a text message to GMANews.TV. Suplico, together with businessman Jose “Joey" De Venecia III and civil society lawyer Harry Roque, has filed the fourth impeachment case against Arroyo. “I recall that several House members denounced the (previous) non-endorsement of De Venecia as fatal to the complaint, because his son Joey is a complainant," Suplico noted. After several weeks of waiting, the elder De Venecia on Saturday finally said he will endorse the complaint, saying that the national interest should be above his person. “When the complaint to impeach President Arroyo was filed early last week, my initial impulse was not to endorse it—out of delicadeza, because one of the principal complainants is my son, Joey de Venecia III," the elder De Venecia said in a separate statement. But since then, the former House leader said he has come to believe that the impeachment complaint is invested with a purpose that commands a higher sense of duty to country and people. “For me not to endorse such grave allegations—and so prevent them from being heard by a competent political court—would in itself constitute a crime against the Filipino people," Rep. De Venecia said. He added: “As a matter of personal conscience, therefore, of public duty to our people, and in consideration of the highest national interest, I am endorsing this impeachment complaint without reservation. In previous reports, opposition Rep. Didagen Dilangalen (Maguindanao) said that De Venecia could not endorse the impeachment complaint his son Jose III filed against Arroyo because he is afraid that the ghost of the allegedly anomalous Northrail project may haunt him. Dilangalen said there’s no point in supporting the impeachment complaint because “it is full of rehashed items" and it could suffer the same fate with impeachment attempts in the last three years. “There’s nothing new to it," said Dilangalen, a member of the minority bloc and key ally of pardoned plunder convict and ousted president Joseph Estrada. The younger De Venecia and some activist groups filed the impeachment complaint alleging that Mrs. Arroyo was liable for betrayal of public trust, culpable violation of the constitution, bribery and graft and corruption. Other grounds were human rights violations, the bungled $329 million ZTE scandal, the P728 million fertilizer scam, the ZTE-tainted Mt. Diwalwal project, the P500,000 bribery to congressmen and the alleged electoral fraud in the May 2004 presidential elections. “Kasama diyan (sa complaint) iyung NorthRail of which he (former Speaker) was in charge of syndicating the loan. Iyun nga ang problema niyang malaki baka mag-boomerang (sa kanya)," Dilangalen said.- Fidel Jimenez, GMANews.TV