The year-long campaign to “Impeach Vice-President Sara Duterte” by the Marcos-Romualdez controlled House of Representatives has ended with the transmittal to the Senate seven “Articles of Impeachment” last week.
The stage is now set for “trial”, for new manoeuvres, contretemps, strategies, even surprises, to convict, remove from office and disqualify the popular vice-president from running in the 2028 presidential election. This is the entire purpose of this whole exercise. But will the “Opposition” succeed?
The prepared script draws inspiration from an un-examined view of recent history: President Estrada’s aborted impeachment trial due to the walk-out of the 11-member Prosecution Panel that led to his unceremonious departure from Malacanang; the resignation from office of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez even before her impeachment trial could start and the conviction by a vote of 20-3 in the impeachment trial that lead to the removal from office of a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. President Marcos Jr., then a senator, voted to acquit the late CJ Renato N. Corona.
An “impeachment trial” is said to be a “quasi-judicial and quasi-political process.” Whether it is more “judicial” than “political” or “political” than being “judicial” is anybody’s guess.
Immediately the word, or the concept “quasi-judicial and quasi-political” becomes so elusive one cannot pin down its precise meaning. Why so “acceptable-to-some-yet-unclear-to-others” decision rule is considered unassailable, in such a process that could make or unmake the fortunes of an accused, is utterly incomprehensible to ordinary or even intelligent people.
This is akin to the “trial by ordeal” of old.
Like Cong. Dan Fernandez, otherwise known as “Atty. Google”, I have an unflinching belief and trust in Google as a reference book of wisdom. “If someone is guilty or innocent of a crime”, reads my favourite on-line platform, have the “accused person do a painful task.” If he or she survives without any injury, then he or she is innocent”; if he or she suffers an injury, then he or she is “guilty.” That simple.
This situation will apply to what will happen in the impeachment trial of VP Sara Duterte. There will tell-tale signs if she is guilty or not. The trick will help our senator-judges. Just apply the test: sink or float.
One can make use of the more common test of “ordeal by water.”
The hands and legs of the accused are tightly tied and thrown into the water. If the accused sank, he or she is adjudged guilty and would be executed; if he or she floats in the water then he or she is considered innocent and would be freed. That’s how simple justice work in this set up.
In modern criminal justice system this is associated with the legal maxim “guilty until proven innocent.” The presumption that “one is presumed innocent until proven guilty” does not simply apply.
Which justice system will prevail in the impeachment trial of VP Sara Duterte?
Innocent until proven guilty or guilty until proven innocent?
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