BEFORE the crucial vote on whether two impeachment complaints against President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. would move forward, the chair of the House Committee on Justice on Wednesday morning said impeachment must rest on clearly pleaded facts, not suspicion or politics.
Batangas Rep. Gerville “Jinky Bitrics” Luistro said an impeachment complaint must meet a strict constitutional threshold and cannot rely on loose associations or unproven claims.
“Significantly, for a complaint to be sufficient in substance, let us all be reminded, it must do more than suggest wrongdoing by association or inference,” Luistro said in her opening statement as the panel continued its determination of the sufficiency in substance of the impeachment complaints against the President.
“It must plead facts with particularity, showing that the official personally participated in knowingly authorized or culpably ignored acts that strike at the integrity of the office itself,” she added.
Luistro warned that impeachment should not be used as a sweeping remedy for alleged wrongdoing elsewhere in government or for disputed policy decisions, stressing that the process “does not operate on a theory of strict liability for governance.”
“The official is not constitutionally impeachable simply because wrongdoing is alleged somewhere in the bureaucracy or because a policy decision is later criticized or questioned,” she pointed out.
“To hold otherwise would collapse the careful constitutional design and render every official perpetually vulnerable to impeachment based on suspicion alone.”
Luistro described the panel’s role as narrowly defined and legally exacting. “Our task today is therefore disciplined, not dismissive, exacting, not adversarial,” she said.
The committee, she added, would determine “whether the allegations as written stand on constitutional ground or whether they rest on speculation, conjecture, or political disagreement dressed merely in constitutional language.”
At the same time, Luistro emphasized that the proceedings are not a measure of political sentiment.
“Our proceeding today is intended to test the legal sufficiency of the complaint, not their popularity, not their rhetoric, not their political appeal,” Luistro said.
“In doing so, this committee affirms a simple but vital principle: impeachment must protect the Constitution, not weaken it,” Luistro added.
