How far will Abalos impeachment case go?

FOR some in civil-society groups, the impeachment case against Commission on Elections Chairman Benjamin Abalos Sr. will be a problem that will remain in the confines of Intramuros, where the poll body’s office is located. It won’t cross over to Mendiola, in Malacañang, where President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo holds office.

“The impeachment hearings against Abalos will push through, but it will stop before it reaches the president,” says Ramon Casiple, executive director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform (IPER).

Earlier, Romulo Neri, former National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) director-general, testified before the Senate that Abalos offered him a P200-million bribe in connection with the $329-million National Broadband Network (NBN) deal. Neri’s testimony is now one of the vital grounds in the impeachment case filed by Iloilo Vice Governor Rolex Suplico.

The impeachment complaint charges Abalos with betrayal of the public trust, culpable violations of the Constitution, bribery and corruption in connection with the NBN project.

Read Suplico’s impeachment complaint.

Neri, however, stopped short at revealing the part played by Arroyo that led to the approval of the NBN deal under a loan agreement, despite her earlier pronouncements that she wanted the project pursued under a build-operate-transfer (BOT) scheme. A GMANews.tv exclusive report reveals Arroyo has given the green light to two Cabinet members to negotiate with China’s ZTE Corporation for the contract, even before NEDA could begin evaluating the project.

“It will not reach the level of the president because Neri stopped with Abalos,” says Casiple. He adds that Abalos’s fate will depend on which way House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr.’s “core group” will swing. Neri was chief of the congressional planning and budget office for 12 years, first under the late Speaker Ramon Mitra, and later, under de Venecia.

Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales demanded that all government officials linked to the deal be punished, “from the highest to the lowest,” urging Congress not to be “selective.”

For now, Casiple says IPER will insist that Abalos immediately go on leave while he faces impeachment.

But San Juan Rep. Ronaldo Zamora, in a television interview, urged Abalos to “spare the country the mess it will go through” with another impeachment case. “He should do the best under the circumstances, which is to resign,” he said. Abalos, who retires in February, has however ruled that out.