(Eagle News) — Malacanang on Thursday said the impeachment complaint filed against President Rodrigo Duterte appeared to be part of a “larger scheme of things.”
“It just seems (like that). It just seems rather dramatic that everything seems to be coordinated at this stage,” Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella said in a press conference minutes after the Magdalo partylist announced the filing of the complaint with the House of Representatives.
Magdalo Rep. Gary Alejano had said in their own media briefing that the complaint was based on five grounds: Duterte’s alleged culpable violation of the Constitution, bribery, betrayal of public trust, graft and corruption and other high crimes.
He particularly noted what he said was the “state policy of killing drug offenders,” the “more than 140,000” killed in Davao when Duterte was mayor, and Duterte’s alleged employment of “more than 11,000 ghost employees” there at that time.
He also emphasized Duterte’s supposed bank accounts, which he claimed contained more than P2.2 billion.
The filing of the complaint also came right after a video of Vice President Leni Robredo speaking about alleged extrajudicial killings in the country surfaced, and was published in Time.com.
The almost six-minute video, which saw Robredo dishing out criticisms of Duterte’s drug war, was shown in a nongovernment organization’s event on the sidelines of a main United Nations event in Vienna, Austria.
The NGO, DRCnet Foundation, is based in Washington, in the United States, and is strongly against drug wars.
“It certainly seems like an outline,” Abella said when asked if he thought the filing of the first impeachment complaint against Duterte was part of a destabilization plot.
When told to elaborate, Abella said: “We simply just look at the outline. We observe and we make observations..It just seems too well coordinated.”
Asked if he believed Robredo was part of the destabilization plot, he said: “Wala akong sinasabing hindi siya kasama.”
“Mukhang may kaganapan na sabay sabay nangyari. Mukhang napakalinis ng mga kaganapan,” he noted.
‘In aid of destabilization’
Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II, for his part, said the impeachment complaint was filed “in aid of destabilization.”
He said the complaint, after all, “has no factual and legal basis.”
“The allegations in the complaint are not anchored on concrete solid evidence that would support findings of any of the enumerated grounds for impeachment. Mere allegations without proof are not evidence,” he said.
Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez was more blunt when asked about his reaction to the filing of the impeachment complaint.
“Kagaya ng sinabi ko…, all of us, we are entitled to our own stupidity,” he told CNN Philippines anchor Pia Hontiveros.
“When you accuse a person, dapat patunayan mo..,” he added. With a report from Erwin Temperante
