At the End of the Day

SOMETIMES A DELAY can prove more efficient in the use of time and resources. The Senate Resolution 441 of Senator Francis Pangilinan may have been late for the adoption of Senate Resolution 432, otherwise known as the Rules of Procedures on Impeachment Trials, on March 23. But the senators may as well adopt it anyway to speed up the Gutierrez Impeachment Trial and save the country millions of pesos for the cost of an exercise that might not conclude earlier than a year. What is a two-month delay if a final decision can be made within the first two months of hearing? Since the Pangilinan proposal allows the senator-judges to remove current Ombudsman chief Merceditas Guttierez when proven guilty only on one article, the impeachment proceedings can be concluded even on the first impeachment article should the evidence allows. That will certainly cut on the costs, allow the Filipinos to get over the issue quick, and when the verdict is guilty let the government do away with Gutierrez fa

THERE WAS AN ATTEMPT to misinform the Filipinos, coming from the Supreme Court lately through its spokesperson Atty. Midas Marquez, its Acting Chief of the Public Information Office. Midas claimed that he had an affidavit signed ( reportedly under pressure ) from the person involved in the distribution of official case documents of Ombudsman Chief Merceditas Gutierrez in her petition to have the High Court stop the impeachment hearing against her at the House of Representatives by the Committee on Justice, docketed as G. R. No. 193450. One claim said that copies of the 65-page petition (248 pages, including the annexes) were distributed and placed on the conference table of teh en banc session conference room on 14 September 2010. In a press statement issued dated 9 March 2011, Associate Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno put the facts clearly and unequivocally: "My office received the Petition on September 14, 2010, at 2:15 p.m. No other copy was received by me or by my staff either