By Teddy Casiño/BAYAN Chairperson and complainant againstn Marcos
THE DISMISSAL of the second impeachment complaint against Pres. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (on Wednesday, February 4) is a grave assault on constitutional accountability and a clear undermining of the system of checks and balances between Congress and the Executive.
[W]e witnessed Congress abandon its constitutional duty as an independent check on executive power. By prematurely dismissing the impeachment complaints on the ground of “insufficiency in substance,” without a full and fair deliberation, the House of Representatives effectively shielded the President from accountability and reduced impeachment to a meaningless formality.
This dismissal is especially alarming because it disregarded even Congress’s own impeachment rules and long-established practice. Questions of sufficiency are meant only to establish a recital of facts constituting the ground for impeachment. Members of the committee clearly went beyond that standard, with many already questioning the evidence and lawyering for the president.
By undermining the impeachment process, Congress denied the Filipino people the right to know the truth and denied itself the opportunity to hold a coequal branch of government accountable.
More disturbing is that this act of protection was not only for the President but also for the legislators themselves. Many members of Congress were beneficiaries, enablers, or silent partners in the multi-billion-peso flood control scandal that lies at the heart of the impeachment complaint. By killing the complaint early, they were not merely defending Malacañang. They were shielding their own complicity, their own pork insertions, and their own role in the systematic plunder of public funds. Congress has thus revealed itself not as a forum of accountability but as a protection racket of politicians willing to sacrifice constitutional principles, public trust, and even their own rules to preserve a corrupt system that benefits them all.
This decision deepens the crisis of governance in the country. It sends a dangerous message that powerful officials are beyond accountability, that constitutional remedies can be neutralized by political convenience, and that corruption on a massive scale can be buried through procedural maneuvering.
The people will not forget this betrayal. If Congress refuses to check executive abuse, then the task of accountability returns to the streets, to public vigilance, and to the continued struggle for genuine democratic reform. Impeachment may have been dismissed today, but the demand for truth, accountability, and justice will only grow stronger. #
