[1] Political or personal interest does not invalidate an impeachment. Strategy in politics or revenge in family feud doesn’t disqualify impeachment as a constitutio-nal device on accountability.
Politicians like BB Marcos and Martin Romualdez may want to to remove Sara Duterte from competition in 2028. The Marcoses may want to hit back at VP Sara for her threat against their lives. Personal, impure motives alone won’t disable impeachment.
The fact is: Politics and personal interest cannot be totally purged from the impeachment move. Just as charges against rival politicians cannot be free completely of selfish, non-patriotic agenda.
[2] Overwhelming majority of Filipinos believe VP Sara must face Senate trial.An Octa Research survey released on
June 9, 2025, shows that nearly four in five Filipinos, or 78% of 1,200 respondents, support a trial for Duterte. Only 13% said she should not be tried, while 9% were unsure or did not answer. In Metro Manila, support reached 83%; in Central Visayas, it was 89%.
That means most Filipinos -- pro-Duterte or pro-BBM or non-aligned -- want that trial done.
[3] VP Sara’s innocence or guilt is not yet the issue. The accusations were first publicly raised at the congressional hearings, which tainted the Vice President’s reputation. She chose not to answer the charges (her silence, it seemed, was her answer), which led to four complaints of impeachment filed, with 240 verified complainants on the last complaint transmitted to the Senate.
The Senate trial will be her chance to refute the evidence the prosecutors will present.
[4] Senator-judges have so far shown it is trying to delay if not abort the trial. Some senator-judges don’t even try to conceal their bias for VP Sara. The Senate, as impeachment court, needed only to order congressmen-prosecutors to give the information it needed and didn’t have to remand the complaint.
In moving and arguing for dismissal -- later scaled down to a return of the impeachment complaint to the House -- some senators acted like they were lawyering for VP Sara. In requiring a commitment from the 20th Congress, which won’t convene until July, it’s clearly eating up more time and negating the Constitution’s order to conduct a trial “forthwith.” The moves may not be unconstitutional but they shout partiality and bias for VP Sara.
[5] Legal issues abound from the start of the dispute, increasing in number as the road to the trial is traversed, highlighted most recently by the House prosecutors’ June 11, 2025 declaration: “No one can stop the trial.”
Up front now are these issues: (a) Did the House follow the Constitution’s process, topped by the requirement that there should be the no impeachment against the same person more than once a year?
(b) Does the next Congress want to proceed with the impeachment trial? Can an impeachment trial cross over from one Congress to the next, from the 19th Congress to the 20th Congress?
The prosecutors and the House itself indirectly answered the issue (a), saying that only one complaint out of four was actually transmitted to the Senate. And that was the complaint referred to the House committee on justice and later submitted to the Senate. There’s no violation of the rule, whose intent must be not to make one and the same impeached public official undergo the ordeal more than once in a year. VP Sara has yet to go through one complete impeachment process.
As to the cross-over -- aside from impeachment not being a legislative function and thus may continue in a succeeding Congress -- it must not be the intent of Constitution framers to abort a trial by the mere change of the Senate membership.
[6] If the same sentiment displayed so far by the senator-judges (vote to remand the complaint: 18 against five) would prevail during the voting on guilt or innocence after trial, VP Sara would go scot-free.
But then the senator-judges, seen now as pro-Sara, might vote differently if evidence against her would move public pressure against acquittal.
The Vice President said she wants the impeachment trial to proceed and yet she filed a petition with the Supreme Court seeking to stop the trial.
[7] Why prevent a trial if VP Sara and the senator-judges aligned with or inclined to support her are confident she’d be acquitted? The trial might disclose evidence not fully uncovered during the congressional hearings, such as hidden and inexplicable wealth. Even if that evidence won’t be strong enough to support a conviction, it could be the kind that would inflict, in the eyes of 2028 voters, irreparable damage to the Duterte reputation.