(Once upon a time not long ago, in a kingdom not far away, there ruled a Queen whom most of her subjects disliked. The people of the kingdom believed the Queen had stolen the throne, raided the royal coffers, and lied about it.

(Now, it came to pass that some members of her court wanted her out of the kingdom, so they sent three animals to frighten her off the throne: a meek mouse, a crawling cockroach, and a toothless tiger.

(But the Queen had wily advisers whom she had enticed with promises of gold and great power to stick by her side. They gave her this advice, which she followed:

(“Make those who oppose you believe you are afraid of the mouse. The cockroach we will squash; the tiger we will poison. The mouse we will strangle afterwards.”

(Poisoned, the tiger never had the chance to use its teeth. The cockroach, crawling in the dark limbo of insecure intents, was squashed unnoticed in the dark. The queen shrieked in scripted fear when she saw the timid mouse; her advisers strangled the poor fellow before it could even squeak.

(So, it came to pass that the toothless tiger, the crawling cockroach, and the meek mouse never had even the cursory chance to do what they had been sent to do: frighten the queen out of the throne.)

In the early evening of Aug. 31, 2005, the Justice Committee of the House of Representatives killed all three impeachment complaints against President Gloria Arroyo. With the opposition congressmen noticeably absent during the proceedings, the slaughter of the “search for truth” was a breeze.

Hours before the coup de grace that dealt the death blow to the only impeachment complaint recognized by the committee — the Oliver Lozano complaint — Rep. Agapito Aquino, younger brother of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, martyred during the Marcos dictatorship, attempted to stir the conscience of his colleagues in the committee.

“It is a curious coincidence that on this very day a couple of decades ago, my brother Ninoy was buried after he was murdered by the cohorts of Ferdinand Marcos,” Aquino told his impassive peers. “The killing continues to this day. We are about to murder and bury the truth.”

Makati City Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr., scion of the family that fought for a free press during the Marcos rule, warned his colleagues against killing the impeachment.

Calling the Justice Committee hearing “a Roman circus,” Locsin made no attempt to hide the bitterness and frustration in his voice.

“We are faced here with a predicament where we have poisoned the tiger and sent a mouse to fight the gladiators,” Locsin told the majority bloc to which he belonged. “Now, we are about to strangle the mouse.”

Any discerning student of Political Science 101 would have seen through the manner with which the congressmen loyal to President Arroyo killed through sheer numbers any and all attempts to impeach her.

There were three impeachment complaints: the meek complaint of lawyer Lozano which, reports said later, was commissioned by Malacañang; the crawling inconsequential complaint of Jose Lopez; and the only complaint with teeth — the amended Lozano complaint prepared and presented by the political opposition.

Leaders of the opposition, backed by legal luminaries of the country, had insisted that the three complaints could and should have been amalgamated into one credible charge, something that the president and her allies in Congress did not want.

So the Justice Committee broke the issue into so-called “prejudicial questions” that the Arroyo loyalists could dispose of with dispatch.

First, they decided that the Lozano, Lopez and amended Lozano complaints were, in fact, separate complaints that could not be reconciled into a single charge.

Second, they ruled that the only valid charge was the meek Lozano complaint, because its filing had antedated the others by as wide a timespan as five minutes.

And then, a couple of hours after ruling that the Lozano complaint was the only valid complaint, the Justice Committee strangled it dead by declaring it was insufficient in substance.

(So died the toothless tiger, the crawling cockroach, and the meek mouse. But the fight to drive the queen out of the throne is not yet over.)

Let us go on a short historical rewind, dear reader.

Last July 8, when the calls for her to step down gripped the nation, President Arroyo fought off resignation by offering to subject herself to impeachment proceedings “as a peaceful and constitutional alternative.”

It was on this premise that the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) refused to join the call for her to resign and, instead, opted for the creation of a Truth Commission and supported Arroyo’s offer of an impeachment option.

There was a general sense of dismay over the CBCP statement that fateful Sunday in early July among those who believed that Arroyo had betrayed the trust of the people. But the stand of the Catholic bishops headed off the mounting clamor for her to step down; it gave her a lease on life in the Palace.

After the “Roman circus” of a Justice Committee hearing that culminated in the slaughter of the impeachment complaints, it is now clear that Arroyo was not sincere in her offer “to subject herself to impeachment proceedings as a peaceful and constitutional alternative.”

The opposition, her own party allies in the Senate, political observers, and a growing number of bishops and priests believe that Arroyo corrupted the impeachment proceedings with the filing of the meek and insubstantial Lozano complaint at the instance of Malacañang.

They are accusing her of “bribing and pressuring congressmen not to sign the impeachment complaint, begging them by phone at all times of the day and night, appointing their relatives, inviting them to Malacañang, and the last straw, directing the House majority to kill the complaint before she leaves for the United Nations.”

The CBCP must have realized by now that the “impeachment offer” was, in the words of Winston Churchill, “a terminological inexactitude.”

In the vocabulary of simple citizens like you and me it means “a lie.”

(Disheartened by the fate of the meek mouse, the crawling cockroach and the toothless tiger, the Queen’s subjects met in secret. “Why do we have to send animals to scare her off the throne?” They argued among themselves.

(“Why don’t we drive her out ourselves?”)

(Editor’s note: For comments and reactions, e-mail: rene_bartolo@yahoo.com )