IF IMPEACHMENT CASE IS WEAK, WHY ARE THEY
SUPPRESSING THE EVIDENCE AGAINST GMA?

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Nene Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today urged President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to submit herself to the impeachment process to enable her to directly rebut the accusations of wrongdoing against her in a fair and open hearing and put a final closure to the controversies that have rendered her presidency ineffective.

Pimentel dared the President to tell her congressional allies not to use their numerical superiority to prematurely kill the impeachment complaint and to block the presentation of evidence and witnesses by the impeachment proponents so that she can rebut the charges against her point by point.

He deplored the Presidents haughty pronouncement that the impeachment case is bound to be trashed because of peoples lack of interest.

Impeachment will fail not because of lack of interest but because of money politics utilized by a power-mad President, Pimentel said.

She has shown what money politics could do in the previous impeachment trial. She is not beyond doing it against if she has not yet already done it.

Pimentel also criticized Palace officials and administration congressmen for saying that the impeachment case should be trashed without delay for allegedly being weak and without basis.

And yet he said they have no qualms in employing every foul trick to suppress the presentation of the evidence and cover up the truth.

The lone senator from Mindanao also backed the call of minority congressmen for Maguindanao Rep. Simeon Datumanong to inhibit himself from chairing the House committee on justice that is passing over the impeachment charges against the President.

The congressman has shown himself to be an uninhibited partisan and a blind follower of the President, Pimentel said.