HOUSE Assistant Majority Leader Zia Alonto Adiong of Lanao del Sur said Monday that the vice president’s camp appears to be speaking in two voices, with her legal team insisting they are ready to face the Senate while some of her supporters and political defenders continue trying to discourage lawmakers from sending the impeachment case there.
For Alonto Adiong, the contradiction is no longer a minor issue. He said it goes to the heart of the defense itself: if the proper forum is the Senate, as the vice president’s lawyers keep saying, then the logical position should be to allow the case to reach the Senate and let the evidence be tested there. Any effort to stop the House from transmitting the Articles of Impeachment, he said, runs counter to that claim.
Speaking on ANC’s Morning Matters, Alonto Adiong said the disconnect is already visible in public.
“Actually, the way that the supporters and the defense team of the Vice President first argue their individual cases have some sort of disconnect because the legal team of the VP is saying that they are ready to present their case at the proper forum which I believe they are referring to as the Senate while the supporters of the Vice President are saying that, you know, it’s employing scare tactics in order to discourage the members from voting in favor or even to support,” Alonto Adiong said.
He said that alone should raise a serious question about what the vice president’s side truly wants: to clear her name in the Senate or to stop the case before it gets there.
“So if they are really supporting the Vice President they should have at least also given that moral support to the team of the Vice President because based on the media and the press conferences of the legal team of the Vice President it appears that they are ready to face the Senate and that’s the only way they can actually clear out the name of their client,” he said.
The contradiction, he added, matters even more because the House case is no longer based on abstract accusations. It now rests on four Articles of Impeachment consolidated after the House Committee on Justice found probable cause.
For Alonto Adiong, the evidence is too substantial to simply dismiss, and the proper response is not fearmongering but allowing the constitutional process to proceed.
“So one group is saying is scaring away potential supporters who actually oppose to the very, you know, the only way that the Vice President can clear out her name is to do something that has, you know, something that does not support it actually or has a disconnect, you know, when it comes to the arguments and the narrative of the defense panel of the Vice President,” he said.
He then laid out what he described as the inconsistency in plain terms.
“So makikita mo doon eh, you can see there is some sort of inconsistency between the legal team of the vice president and the supposed supporters of the vice president. One is saying they are ready for the Senate, and the other one is saying, “Do not vote on this and do not bring this to the Senate.”
Alonto Adiong also said the scare tactics allegedly being directed at lawmakers only deepen the very problem the vice president’s camp claims to oppose.
“So the scare tactic employed by the supporters of the vice president to frighten away possible support, it actually reinforces the culture of impunity,” he said.
He said the issue becomes straightforward once stripped of personalities and political noise.
“Beyond personal interest and political interest, if you’re really into transparency and accountability, if you’re really holding on to the principle that no one is above the law, it’s very clear to you which side you’re on. Which side are you on in this impeachment process?” he said.
For him, this is why the House is moving the complaints forward. He stressed that the chamber’s role is not to determine guilt but to decide whether the evidence warrants a full impeachment trial — a threshold he said had already been met by the reconciled Saballa and Cabrera complaints.
The Senate, he added, has its own constitutional duty once the Articles of Impeachment are transmitted.
“And so, to me, as a layman, and many of our legal luminaries also came out with the propositions that the Senate as an institution has no choice. This is not a discretionary matter. This is not something that they can decide on. So, the legal luminaries and even the Constitution would mean that the Senate, as an institution, has to convene and convert itself into an impeachment court. This is not an issue of personal choices. This is not an issue of personal preference. This is not an issue of a discretionary decision. This is an issue of a constitutional mandate,” he said.
For Alonto Adiong, the bottom line remains clear.
“So makikita mo doon eh, you can see there is some sort of inconsistency between the legal team of the vice president and the supposed supporters of the Vice President. One is saying they are ready for the Senate, and the other one is saying do not vote on this and do not bring this to the Senate,” Alonto Adiong said.
