Photo courtesy: AP
The impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte is taking different tunes. The conduct of the trial is being impugned by several phalanx of incurable anti-Duterte critics and politicians who will not stop at bribery to get rid of Sara from running for President in the 2028 regular elections.
The so-called authority of the 1987 Cory Constitution suddenly resurrected from the near state of rigor mortis to join the fray asserting their intellectual ascendancy when it comes to interpreting the constitution. “Forthwith” has become a word of distinction, the members of the House of Romualdez and other bystanders took turns in assailing Senate President Chiz Escudero for failing to immediately convene the Senate into an impeachment court.
Their condemnation of the Senate was a convenient cover up of the fact that the House of Representatives took their sweet time and even intentionally delayed the submission of the Articles of Impeachment which they delivered only on February 5, 2025 at the last few minutes prior to the recess of the Senate session to give way to the midterm elections. They did it on purpose to put the blame later not only Escudero but to discredit the senator judges later.
It was an insidious plot which made the Senate President the sacrificial goat. But Escudero has a gift of discernment he did not allow the supercilious House Speaker Martin Romualdez and his lapdogs get one over him and the members of the Impeachment Court.
Escudero’s actions of course did not sit well with the salivating predatory reptiles who are after Sara Duterte who is the lone impediment to their ambition to occupy the Palace when the incumbent tenant leaves it in 2028.
When the Senate was convened and later moved to remand the Articles of Impeachment (AOI) back to the Lower House to insure that there are no “constitutional infirmities”, once more the Upper Chamber was rained with legal razzmatazz from the usual critics. Malacanang, through its garrulous mouthpiece, Kler Castro, pitched in her two-cents-worth to warn that delaying the trial will drive away investor from the Philippines as if the country has not been avoided by foreign capitalists because of the atmosphere of ambiguity and the leadership decision to establish five more military bases which are all beckons of arms for mass destruction like what we now see in Iran and Israel.
Luckily we still have sober and apolitical constitutionalists and legal gurus around. Former Supreme Court Associate Justice Adolfo Azcuna, who drafted the articles of impeachment of the 1987 the impeachment provisions explained that in remanding the the AOI back to the House of Representatives the Senate merely wants the House to certify that the impeachment process adhered to constitutional requirements, most importantly that it is not violative of the one-year bar on filing more than one impeachment complaint against an impeachable official.
In fact Justice Azcuna credited the move of the Senate for it allows for a smooth transition of the case to the 20th Congress. He enunciated that
remanding the AOI to the Lower House is nothing but “a unique procedure to ensure that the same articles of impeachment is the one tackled by both congresses”. He concluded by saying that it is a brilliant move.
Meantime the trial is on hold pending the response from the HoR. Meantime too some mental freaks are suggesting that biased Senators must inhibit themselves from the trial as Senator Judges not thinking that this could actually led to the acquittal of the accused.
That is sad because VP Sara with his battery of lawyers are all ready for the bloodbath.
