Pro-Arroyo Legislators Reject Impeachment Bid

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s congressional allies used their dominating majority and the opposition’s absence Wednesday to toss out all three impeachment complaints against her.

Opposition legislators cried foul and warned that the country’s third “people power” revolt loomed. They watched the events unfold on television, like the rest of the country, after walking out a day earlier from a hearing on the complaints in the House justice department committee.

But despite clashes between riot police and anti-Arroyo demonstrators outside Congress that injured 11 protesters, there was little sign that allegations that Arroyo rigged last year’s election were generating the emotions, or masses, that fueled the peaceful ousters of dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1986 and Arroyo’s predecessor, Joseph Estrada, in 2001.

“I hope the public will receive it favorably,” pro-Arroyo Rep. Rodolfo Antonino said. “If the opposition claims that this was railroaded, it was not railroaded. They were the ones who walked out.”

The opposition did say it was railroaded, adding that it saw the committee hearing as a well-orchestrated sham. Pro-Arroyo lawmakers called the walkout a desperate attempt to trigger street protests.

The opposition held slim hope of still getting the 79 signatures -- one-third of the House of Representatives -- that are needed to send the case directly to the Senate for trial. It maintains that it is six signatures short.

Television footage showed police outside Congress pushing back rain-soaked protesters with fiberglass shields and hitting them with wooden truncheons, including women sprawled on the road.

A protester, blood oozing from his head, was escorted away by companions. Some demonstrators fought back with stones.

Popular televangelist Eddie Villanueva, a former presidential candidate, urged the opposition to exhaust constitutional means of pressing charges against Arroyo, but said people would have no recourse but to take to the streets if the charges were dismissed on a technicality.