Labor leader and senatorial candidate Leody de Guzman on Monday said re-electionist senators in the administration’s Alyansa ng Bagong Pilipinas slate are failing to perform their constitutional duty to convene an impeachment trial against Vice President Sara Duterte.
De Guzman said the ongoing election season does not justify having the trial proceed only in the 20th Congress.
“Gusto nilang maging senador ulit pero ayaw nilang gampanan ang pinaka-kagyat na tungkulin ng pagiging senador,” he said in a statement.
(They want to be senators again but they don’t want to do the most immediate duty of being a senator.)
“Ang tunay na motibo ng kanilang pag-abandona sa tungkulin ay ayaw nilang ma-isolate sa mga botante sa mga balwarte ng pareho at nagtutunggaling paksyon ng administrasyong Marcos at ni Sara Duterte,” De Guzman alleged.
(The real motive for their abandonment of duty is that they do not want to be isolated from voters in the strongholds of either warring faction, that of the Marcos administration and of Sara Duterte.)
The Senate adjourned its sessions last February 5 without tackling the impeachment complaint against Duterte endorsed by over 200 members of the House of Representatives and transmitted to the Senate on the same day.
Senate President Francis “Chiz” Escudero has stood firm on not holding the impeachment trial while Congress is on break, regardless of the number of signatures gathered to call for the start of the trial.
Escudero, who will serve as the presiding officer of the trial, set the tentative date for its start on July 30, after the President’s State of the Nation Address.
The re-electionists on the Alyansa slate are Senators Pia Cayetano, Lito Lapid, Imee Marcos, Bong Revilla, and Francis Tolentino.
De Guzman also called out other Alyansa senatorial candidates Camille Villar and Erwin Tulfo, who are both House members who did not sign the impeachment complaint.
“Hindi natin nakikitaan ng integridad ang mga kandidato ng administrasyon na playing safe dahil ang gusto nila ay manatili sa poder at mapalakas pa ang monopolyo ng kanilang pamilya sa kapangyarihan,” he said.
(We do not see the integrity of the administration’s candidates who are playing it safe because they want to stay in power and further boost their family’s monopoly on power.)
GMA News Online has reached out to the senatorial candidates for comment. — BM, GMA Integrated News
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