How and when is impeachment initiated?

Bumped up again: My blogpost on the matter.

DJB: How the Supreme Court Set Up That Silly Impeachment Initiation Rule

UPDATE: Related stuff from Francisco Tatad, who I did not know has a blog.

UPDATE: From the Tribune Editorial: Supreme Castration

In selfishly protecting its individual and personal interest, the Supreme Court of the land effectively castrated the constitutional proviso of removing an impeachable officer through the process of impeachment, thus granting the corrupt constitutional officers immunity from removal in office and making a complete mockery of the Constitution.

It is the high court that is solely to blame for this castration of the impeachment proviso and all because the justices were not only shielding then Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. — who was then facing a genuine impeachment complaint at the House of Representatives and which already had the required numbers to send the Davide complaint to the Senate for trial — but also immunizing themselves from future impeachment complaints...

Davide and a couple of other justices were facing two impeachment complaints, the first of which was sat upon by the House, while the second one, which had the required signatories, focused solely on Davide in the matter of the misuse of the judiciary development fund.

To evade an impeachment trial and to save the prostituted hide of Davide, the high court’s interpretation of Article XI, Section 3 (5) which states that no impeachment proceedings shall be initiated against the same official more than once a year, was that the proceedings meant the filing of only one complaint a year, thus opening wide the doors of instant immunization of the impeachable officers through the filing of a yearly bogus complaint.

One must not forget either that the prostituted House of Representatives helped to strengthen this Davide Court ruling, by ensuring that the bogus complaint is accepted, while amended complaints that have substance are immediately killed, without benefit of the presentation of evidence.

This unconstitutional ruling by the high court has been used to the hilt by Gloria Arroyo and her allies in the House, to immunize herself from impeachment proceedings, then, now and up till her term ends — and by the simple expedient of getting someone to file a bogus impeachment complaint yearly which will then be endorsed by one of her congressional allies.

This has happened again and again in her case.

The first time, with her government at the point of collapsing due to the “Hello Garci” wiretap tapes where her conversations on the cheating operations with poll commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, she and her then political adviser, Gabby Claudio, fixed up the bogus Oliver Lozano complaint which was quickly endorsed by her ally, party-list Rep. Rodante Marcoleta. Even as a genuine complaint amending the Lozano complaint followed and where no proceedings had as yet taken place, the impeachment complaint was quickly killed by Gloria’s House allies.

The second time, anti-Gloria groups beat a bogus complaint by filing the first complaint, but the prostituted House allies quickly killed it on claimed “technicalities.”

With the ZTE-National Broadband Network contract investigation threatening the political survival of Gloria and a falling out between her and the Speaker, Jose de Venecia Jr., there suddenly came yet another bogus complaint which Malacañang tried to pass off as a genuine one, even going to the extent of allegedly bribing several opposition congressmen to endorse the bogus complaint, to make it look as if it was authentic.

In the end, as Malacañang and its fronts failed to get any opposition member to endorse the complaint which was filed by lawyer Ruel Pulido, who is now being billed as the successor to Lozano, was endorsed by another Gloria ally, Laguna Rep. Edgar San Luis, who is having a difficult time explaining why he had endorsed the bogus three-page complaint.

But none of these bogus complaints would have made possible a fail-safe immunization for any and all impeachable officers if the high court and its justices chose to be true to themselves and to the Constitution they vowed to uphold and protect, if in the first place, they thought of the Filipino people instead of themselves.