A rushed decision

NEARLY two months after President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s allies at the House of Representatives threw out the second impeachment complaint against her, the Social Weather Stations (SWS) reports that more Filipinos believe it was a rushed decision.

The 2006 third quarter survey, conducted from September 24 to October 2, 2006 among 1,200 households, showed that 48 percent “think the decision to reject the impeachment case against the President was made too quickly.” Majority or 67 percent of respondents in Metro Manila agree; 51 percent in Luzon and about two out of five in Mindanao and Visayas feel the same way.

The SWS also reported that more Filipinos or 45 percent disagree with the Lower House’s decision to junk the case filed on July 28, 2006. Last August 24, majority of the House members voted to adopt the justice committee’s report endorsing the dismissal of the impeachment case for lack of substance. A year ago, Arroyo’s allies also junked three impeachment complaints on technicalities.

It added that there was in fact “greater opposition” to the decision of the House members this year than in 2005. The SWS survey last year showed that the Filipinos were split — 37 percent disagreed while 36 percent agreed — on the dismissal of the first impeachment case against Arroyo.

The decision to dismiss the complaint this year is “more unpopular” in Metro Manila, where 56 percent or majority of the respondents say they were opposed to the move to dismiss the complaint. Over half or 51 percent of those in the rest of Luzon also disagree with the dismissal. But opinions are mixed in the Visayas, with 32 percent of the respondents agreeing and 36 percent disagreeing; almost similar results were seen in Mindanao.

Moreover, SWS reported that all socio-economic classes were predominantly against the decision of the House: 52 percent in Classes ABC, 46 percent in Class D, and 41 percent in Class E.

The survey results also somehow evoke the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines‘ (CBCP) presentiment against a repeat of the outcome of the first impeachment attempt against Arroyo, made in a pastoral statement it issued last July expressing less optimism in the process as a means for establishing the truth about the 2004 elections.

The bishops said then that unless “the (impeachment) process and its rules as well as the mindsets of all participating parties, pro and con, are guided by no other motive than genuine concern for the common good, impeachment will once again serve as an unproductive political exercise, dismaying every citizen, and deepening the citizen’s negative perception of politicians, left, right and center.”

See the results of the latest SWS survey.