The longest hour

IT was, they said, the longest ever Privilege Hour in the House of Representatives. It certainly seemed that way. The speeches began at 5 p.m. and ended at about 10. By then, it was more than apparent that tonight is going to be a very long night and that this is going to be a battle of wills. Both sides appeared ready to fight to exhaustion (theirs’ and the audience’s), and so after a 45-minute dinner break at 10, the congressmen still seemed to be in fighting form when session resumed at 10:45.

And fight they did. There were enough fireworks in the next two hours to light up this dark night. Only by 12:40 a.m. were Justice Committee chair, Rep. Simeon Datumanong, and vice chair, Samar Rep. Marcelino Libanan, finally able to make their sponsorship speeches for their committee’s controversy-wracked report junking the Arroyo impeachment complaints. The exasperated majority members of the committee were delayed for two hours by a volley of questions and motions from members of the minority, led by Taguig-Pateros Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano, who objected to what they said was the undue haste in which the committee had approved its report.

In what appeared to be a renewed and concerted effort to delay the impeachment’s death, the minority congressmen took the majority by surprise by wielding procedural rules and technicalities, the same weapons that the administration representatives had taken in the last two weeks of hearings on the impeachment complaint.

Majority congressmen were understandably peeved, to Cayetano’s apparent glee, “Isang beses lang akong nag-technicality, umaangal na kayo (I just invoked technicalities once and all of you are complaining),” he said and pressed his point even further. His colleagues soon followed suit, saying that the report should have been discussed in committee first and then approved in a committee hearing. They asked that another committee meeting be held to deliberate the report.

All the questions and motions were apparently aimed at derailing the administration’s plan to bury the impeachment tonight. The opposition seems bent on stretching the debate at least until tomorrow, when a big anti-Arroyo march is being planned. As I write this, the fireworks continue. Voices were raised. Tempers flared. The chair had a hard time appeasing both sides.

It is 12:40 a.m. and congressmen are miraculously, unusually awake. This is a House that has balked at hard work and as the session enters its eighth hour, there appears to be enough energy to keep on going a few more hours.

Earlier, San Juan Rep. Ronaldo Zamora followed the series of privilege speeches by presenting evidence that he said the opposition would have revealed at the impeachment trial. He asserted that the opposition had documents and witnesses and had more than the “Hello, Garci” recording to back its allegations of election fraud. He said they would have presented election officials, supervisors, superintendents, and school principals who had been given bribes. He said election returns were manufactured late last year on the fifth floor of the Mandarin Apartelle on Banawe St. in Quezon City. He talked about fake serial numbers and election returns being printed and election returns being switched in ballot boxes in Congress.

Zamora went down the list of alleged offenses listed in the amended Lozano complaint, asserting that the opposition had evidence to back up its allegations not only fraud but also of corruption and human rights abuses.

Taking the stand, Akbayan Rep. Etta Rosales followed Zamora’s blast with what she said was new evidence that despite his denials, Alagad Rep. Rodante Marcoleta had conspired with Political Affairs Adviser Gabriel Claudio to endorse lawyer Oliver Lozano’s flawed impeachment complaint. That evidence came in the form of a letter sent to Claudio by Bernie Cruz, president of Alagad, last July 21.

"You have asked me to withdraw my interest in a Supreme Court case as representative of the Alagad party in favor of Mr. Rodante Marcoleta," Rosales quoted a portion of Cruz’s letter to Claudio. Alagad officials had filed a petition with the Supreme Court questioning the legality of Marcoleta’s membership in their group. The officials, led by Cruz, also asked the Court throw out Marcoleta as Alagad’s representatived in Congress.

In the letter, Rosales said, Cruz was asking for Claudio’s reasons why he would want Marcoleta to be cleared of the charges. Cruz hinted in his letter that Claudio could be “appeasing" Marcoleta because of his endorsement of the Lozano impeachment complaint.

When he spoke tonight, Makati Rep. Teodoro Locsin took a different tack, saying that even when the congressional canvass of the 2004 elections was being held, he had already expressed his worries that the rushed proclamation of President Arroyo would sooner or later haunt the House. Having proved himself prescient, Locsin ended with another prophetic statement: can the President, he asked, continue to govern and retain support, or is so bereft of support that only a trial can and should determine her fate?