AS I write this piece, Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial has yet to commence. But from how I see it, the trial would proceed smoothly as both the House prosecution team and the Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, have expressed readiness to proceed.
The actual proceedings, however, could present a very much different scenario. While an impeachment trial should be no different from a regular court trial, the former is handled much differently, as conviction requires two-thirds of all members of the Senate to vote for it. As most members of the Senate come from political parties (independent senators are rare), their political biases tend to show up during the trial.
Yes, no amount of denial can refute the fact that an impeachment trial is political. Even with tons of evidence or the absence of it presented and refuted in the trial, at the end of the day, the accused can only be convicted by a two-thirds vote of all members of the Senate sitting as judges whose decision on the case may have already been betrothed to their political benefactor.
We have seen that before. In the impeachment trial of former President Joseph Estrada, the majority of senators blocked the opening of the second envelope which was then believed to contain damning evidence against the former president.
And who could forget former senator Bong Revilla's privilege speech when he admitted that the late president Noynoy Aquino allegedly asked a favor of him during the impeachment trial of the late chief justice Renato Corona?
“Pare, ibalato mo na sa ‘kin ‘to,” Revilla claimed Aquino III told him during a breakfast meeting at the Palace after then-Interior secretary Mar Roxas picked him up somewhere in Cubao in Quezon City.
Now, we are again facing that dilemma. With the voting threshold yet to be resolved, and conviction remaining at 16 or 15 votes as stated by former chief justice Hilario Davide and former associate justice Adolfo Azcuna, both framers of the 1987 Constitution, we would be hard-pressed to secure a conviction of the vice president despite the overwhelming evidence against her as about nine senators have seemingly sided with her, with one even declaring “Kahit sunugin n’yo ko, amoy-Duterte pa din ako.”
So, what would it take then to remove VP Sara? There would be two courses.
Honestly, I am still pinning my hope on the enlightenment of our senators to render a guilty verdict based on the evidence presented.
When the House committee on justice conducted a hearing on the impeachment complaint against Duterte, the solons zeroed in on her statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) and her alleged bank transactions which the Anti-Money Laundering Council validated.
AMLC executive director Ronel Buenaventura affirmed there 33 suspicious transactions and 630 covered dealings worth P6.7 billion involving Duterte and her husband Manases Carpio.
About P4.4 billion flowed into the accounts, P1.5 billion were transferred out, and around P791 million could not be classified as an inflow or outflow, according to an AMLC report presented to the House justice committee.
At the same time, it was revealed at the justice committee hearings that the vice president had not reported any cash holdings or bank deposits since 2018.
No cash on hand and no cash in bank.
There was an inflow of P1.8 billion into Duterte’s accounts and P2.5 billion into Carpio’s, or P4.4 billion in total deposits; an outflow of P1.2 billion withdrawn from Duterte’s accounts and P343.3 million from Carpio’s accounts; and P791.1 million in transactions that could not be clearly determined based on available records. And yet no declared cash on hand in her SALN.
And this is only one of the allegations to be presented against her in the course of the trial. More will be coming. From the sealed bank records and income tax returns. Factual evidence which up to now the vice president and her counsel have yet to disprove or even explain.
And I believe the senators cannot block any attempt to open the vice president and her husband’s bank account and their ITR; revealing what’s inside would be enough, in my belief, to merit her conviction.
But in case the Senate fails to deliver a guilty verdict despite the overwhelming evidence against Duterte, they have to prepare for the second course of action, the aftermath will surely affect them.
As I’ve stated, an impeachment trial is political in nature and the Senate has no monopoly of political action. The final and decisive political action belongs to the people. They should be reminded of EDSA Dos.
The difference then was that people were only monitoring the coverage of Erap’s impeachment trial on TV. Now we have social media. In the unlikely event the Senate ignores the abundance of evidence speaking for themselves against Duterte, I won’t be surprised if hundreds of thousands of people would fill EDSA in a shorter time than it took in 2001, demanding not only the vice president’s ouster but also of the senators who would have voted for an acquittal.
Convicted or not, I believe VP Sara will be removed. Together with her allies.
