2008 impeachment complaint vs. PGMA

As early as 6am, Jose 'Joey' de Venecia III, Iloilo Vice-Governor Rolex Suplico, and public interest lawyer Harry Roque led the filing of the complaint at the House of Representatives secretary-general's office at 7:40 am to make sure they would be the first to file the impeachment complaint. Said 2008 impeachment complaint was endorsed by Bayan Muna Reps. Satur Ocampo, Teddy Casino, and Gabriela Rep. Liza Maza.

Though the 2005, 2006 and 2007 impeachment complaints were all failures, Prof. Harry Roque of the UP College of Law said that they felt it was their civic duty to still file a new one. Roque said further that the new complaint is different from the ones filed in 2005, 2006 and 2007 since the cases on Northrail, swine scam, and fertilizer scam have all been documented by the Commission on Audit.

The impeachment complaint accuses Mrs. Arroyo of betrayal of public trust after she approved the National Broadband Network (NBN) telecommunications deal with China's ZTE Corp., saying that the deal was overpriced by at least $130M.

Other grounds included in the complaint are:

• culpable violation of the Constitution for approving the Northrail rehabilitation project;
• numerous human rights violations;
• graft and corruption for her administration's involvement in various irregularities including the P728M fertilizer scam, P2B swine scam; and,
• alleged ballot-switching in the 2004 presidential election.