In column, Merci called resignation a 'win-win solution'

A day before news of her reported resignation came out on Friday, Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez wrote that leaving her post was one of her best options. In her column entitled "Darkness before the Dawn," posted on the Business Mirror website on Thursday evening, Gutierrez said that leaving her position seemed to be the best solution at a time when “uncertainties loom" days before the scheduled start of her Senate impeachment trial on May 9. “There is always something more painful that accompanies those uncertainties, despite the brave front I construct for all the world to see (especially my immediate office staff), and it is supposedly the path that would lead me toward a win-win solution to the multitude of problems I face today. That is resignation. "It is supposedly the better of few options available to me today… But in the depths of my being, I see that as capitulation to false charges," Gutierrez said in her column. She viewed resignation as a way to save herself from the "shame of being the first Ombudsman to have been forcibly removed from office." Merci case now moot Gutierrez did submit her letter of resignation to President Benigno Simeon Aquino III Friday morning. Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo said Gutierrez personally handed her resignation letter to Aquino "about an hour ago," when GMA News Online called him up at around noon on Friday. In a text message to GMA News Online, Senator Francis Pangilinan on Friday said Gutierrez's resignation has effectively made her impeachment case before Congress moot and academic. "A resigned official can no longer be removed by impeachment. Her resignation however does not prevent the state from pursuing criminal cases should there be sufficient grounds to do so," he said. Stressful and foreboding Gutierrez admitted that she has been affected by the stress brought about by the upcoming Senate trial. “In the midst of stressful and foreboding surroundings, quiet tears run down from my eyes and the pain cuts deep in my gut, wondering on whether I can really depend on the truth—or on anyone, such as my lawyers and all those who want to help me—to overcome the impeachment trial," she wrote. However, Gutierrez showed that this step would mean a new start for her. “There is a saying, in connection with this, that it is always the darkest before dawn. But with our unyielding trust in our Lord, and given His fondness to cloud our minds until the time He deems best, we should feel that it only seems dark, because in truth dawn has already begun to come," she said. - VVP/HS, GMA News