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By Jomar Canlas, Reporter
The chairman of the House
Committee on Justice on Friday vowed to defend former House Speaker
Jose de Venecia Jr. from any ouster move as president emeritus and
member of the ruling coalition, Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats (CMD).
Rep. Matias Defensor of Quezon
City said that in his personal view, Lakas-CMD should not kick out
de Venecia over his recent statement that “everything is for sale
in the country.”
The former House Speaker uttered
the words shortly after an impeachment complaint against President
Gloria Arroyo, of which he was the chief endorser, was thrown out by
Defensor’s committee for lacking substance.
Defensor said that he finds it
sad for de Venecia and President Arroyo to have parted ways but for
the record, he added that it was de Venecia who founded the ruling
coalition along with former President Fidel Ramos.
“I won’t do anything against
[de Venecia]. He was the founder of Lakas, he has done much for the
organization. I think he is entitled to his opinion . . . if the
party will sanction him, I will be the first to stand to support and
defend him,” he added.
Expulsion threat
But Defensor said that the former
House leader must not make a sweeping statement accusing congressmen
of wrongdoing for it damages the institution he helped build during
his five terms as Speaker.
De Venecia is also facing an
expulsion complaint before the House Committee on Ethics.
House Speaker Prospero Nograles
Jr., supposedly out of delicadeza (good taste), has decided not to
preside over an executive committee meeting of Lakas-CMD next week
to decide the expulsion issue against de Venecia.
He said Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri,
the secretary-general of Lakas-CMD, and Mayor Feliciano Belmonte Jr.
of Quezon City could preside instead.
Bishops warned
Nograles also on Friday gave the
country’s Roman Catholic bishops a “sermon” for proposing
“extra-legal” means to oust the Arroyo government.
“The bishops are not above the
law, and they should be more circumspect in calling for mass actions
against the duly constituted authorities,” he said.
Nograles was reacting to a recent
statement of Bishops Antonio Tobias and Deogracias Yñiguez
expressing their apparent support for extra-constitutional means to
oust the President
The two bishops said they hope
that a mass protest action planned for Sunday would spark a bigger
uprising similar to the previous “people power” revolts against
President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and President Joseph Estrada in
2001.
Gonzalez belittled
Tobias belittled Justice
Secretary Raul Gonzalez’s threat of charging him and Yñiguez with
sedition for supporting calls to oust Mrs. Arroyo.
“We are already used to the
threats made by the Secretary of Injustice. We will just wait for
what he will do to us,” he told a television interview also on
Friday.
Tobias said the possibility that
the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines would later
support extra-constitutional means in removing the President from
power is not far.
“I think we are now in that
direction,” he added.
Tobias and Yñiguez made the
statement a day after the Defensor committee trashed the impeachment
complaint.
--With Anthony Vargas
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