The long wait is over but are we prepared for the long haul?
The fourth “impeachment complaint” against Vice-President Sara Duterte was finally transmitted to the Senate last Wednesday, February 5, at five o’clock in the afternoon two hours before the Senate adjourned its session in time for a four-months-long recess or until June 2 after the May 2025 mid-term senatorial and local elections. The three other impeachment resolutions were considered useless and eventually archived.
Thus, the almost two years’ campaign to vilify and “impeach” Vice-President Sara Duterte has come to an end. The stage is set for “trial” with twenty-three “senator-judges” sitting as an “impeachment court.”
One question immediately crops up: will the “impeachment trial” of VP Sara Duterte be concluded within the remaining days of the 19th Congress from which it all emanated from? What happens if the entire process slips into the 20th Congress changing entirely the complexion, composition and number of the Impeachment Court?
Will the Senate have the time to constitute itself as an Impeachment Court, enable the parties to form their respective prosecution and defense teams, come up with an updated “rules of procedure”, call and initiate the impeachment hearings, summons witnesses and come up with a verdict just before the 19th Congress expire on June 30, 2025?
Is the legal terrain fair and square with the respondent vice-president defending herself with the help of his aging father-lawyer against an eleven-member team of “public” prosecutors who are all members of the House of Representatives with an option to hire top-notch corporate lawyers all paid for perhaps by the government?
These are some of the questions that readily comes to mind. And may we ask the penultimate question: who is on trial-- Vice President Sara Duterte alone or the “ruling majority” of the House of Representative with their contempt-laden “tri-quad” committee hearings and scandalous pork-laden 2025 national budget?
We have a president who is openly and publicly at war with his vice president. Being the leader of our people, should President Bongbong Marcos Jr. be involved in this whole national controversy?
Can we put President Marcos Jr. also on trial?
For all his prevarication, double-talk and insensitivity, President Marcos Jr. is all to blame for the travails of his lady Vice-President.
What will happen after June 30 when the purpose for which the “Impeach Sara” was launched is not accomplished--- that is, to defang, humiliate, shame and put behind bars Vice President Sara Duterte?
What about the people, the civil society and the electorate? What is their role in these entire historical process?
In the last three decades five “impeachment complaints” have been filed against our vice-presidents by political opponents.
An impeachment case was filed against Joseph Estrada in 1994 during his term as Vice-President to President Fidel V. Ramos. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was slapped with impeachment charges in 2000 and so was Vice-President Noli de Castro in 2005 and Vice-President Leni Robredo in 2017. All charges were eventually dismissed and Estrada and Macapagal went on to win the presidency in 1998 and 2004.
Vice-President Sara Duterte has the singular distinction of being the only politician voted into office as Vice-President in May 2022 by 32.2 million Filipinos, the highest ever in our electoral history.
Déjà vu?
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