Minority Walkout

The Long View : The walkout by the minority

Manuel L. Quezon III
Inquirer News Service

SO it's possible, after all, to squeeze blood from a turnip. The opposition has been hobbled, from day one of the impeachment fight by the actions of lawyer Oliver Lozano. He may not be known as a splendid lawyer, but he certainly has a keen sense of how to hog the headlines. His complaint has hounded the process every step of the way, leading to the legal and linguistic contortions we've seen in the House.

By all accounts, the Black & White forum was supposed to help influence wavering congressmen to sign the amended complaint. At first blush, the forum disappointed most observers. But then the Palace stepped in only to draw more attention to Dinky Soliman's revelations, the most important of which was her claim to having overheard President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo discussing the Lozano complaint with Secretary Gabby Claudio.

As soon as the Palace saw that no documents or hard evidence would be revealed, they proceeded to attack Soliman and friends. Their tactic: reduce the debate to a "he said, she said" series of pots calling kettles black. In such a game, the administration doesn't have to win, it only has to throw enough mud around. That it did.

What neither side gambled on, perhaps, was the ability of the congressmen themselves to put two and two together, and then, the clumsiness of the majority.

More explosive than Soliman's revelation (of the President's instruction for Claudio to deliver an endorser, and Claudio's instant reaction that he had just the right party-list representative in mind) was a reminder that Lozano had also saved then Vice President Arroyo from impeachment by filing a bogus impeachment complaint in 2000. The clincher in the conspiracy theory was the fact that it was Rep. Prospero Pichay, the lead attack dog of the majority, who endorsed Lozano's complaint then. To the observer, this was the most damning detail.

Then there was the case of the impatient engine driver. If the majority had allowed last Tuesday's justice committee hearings to proceed with ample opportunities for the members of the minority to scream and yell, it could then say they were being spoil sports, because the majority could have proceeded with a vote, and then sneered at the minority for failing to come up with the necessary 79 signatures. And it could have argued that there remained the opportunity for the minority to challenge the majority decision in plenary.

Apparently, it did not enter the minds of the members of the majority that they were relying on a committee chair (Rep. Simeon Datumanong) who had already irritated and frustrated his colleagues because of his weak parliamentary skills and, at times, amusing hearing problem. By nature an easy-going sort of fellow, Datumanong forgot he was dealing with young hotheads.

The clincher was the decision of Datumanong to suspend the debate, thus cutting off Rep. Ace Barbers. Earlier, Datumanong had turned off the microphone on minority representatives when they tried to bring up contentious issues (Soliman's revelation; and the fact that only the "amended" complaint has been properly verified and, therefore, the only one that should be discussed). So Datumanong's scatter-brained and suddenly inflexible behavior was enough to get the minority angry and upset. It was bad politics, because he could have subjected Rep. Robert "Ace" Barbers' motion to a vote and then asked the minority to make its closing statement.

To make things worse, upon summarily ending the debate, Datumanong moved to put the first of the prejudicial questions to a vote. To top it all, he ignored the last-minute attempts of some minority members to make a motion to adjourn (in parliamentary practice, such a motion trumps all other motions, and cannot be ignored). And so, the walkout. Everyone knew a walkout was an option; it had been discussed for weeks. The majority failed to give the minority an excuse for such a move.

Things then moved so fast that neither those in the Session Hall or those watching on TV or listening to radio quite knew what was going on; the television channel ANC immortalized the event as "pandemonium."

Actually, for weeks now, it was said that the minority would do a walkout, either with or without Susan Roces. Rep. Edcel Lagman claims the opposition was set to walk out anyway after the disposition of the second prejudicial question.

So, it means the surprise was that the members of the minority walked out sooner than expected. Why did they do that? Rep. Darlene Custodio's explanation seems quite plausible.

What did the majority do? It hung around, waiting for the minority to come back. Then the minority held a press conference, appealing for signatures, and saying it was fed up and would no longer participate in the committee meeting. The attitude of the minority having been made clear, what did the majority do?

It made the biggest mistake of all. It proceeded to vote on the prejudicial question. It could have waited for cooler heads to prevail. It did not. It proceeded to justify the minority's belief that it was out to railroad events. It held the vote, and won the vote -- though some, like Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr., who remained behind, voted against the motion in disgust (you could clearly see it in Locsin's face as he sat while everyone else stood up to show their approval of the disposition of the prejudicial questions).

When this is all argued and counter-argued in the days to come, the question of the minority's sincerity -- was it planning a walkout all along? -- will be answered by two things: the twitching, angry faces of Custodio and friends, versus the railroaded vote that proceeded even after the minority left the hall.