IN a week when the Senate looked less like a deliberative chamber and more like a stage for political theater, one phrase rose above the noise with numbing repetition: “Impeachment is a political exercise.”
The line is often uttered with a shrug as if it explains everything and excuses anything. But what does it really mean? Does it mean impeachment is simply a numbers game? A contest of alliances? A ritual where evidence is secondary to political survival? Or does it mean something more nuanced: that politics and law inevitably collide when the fate of the nation’s highest officials is at stake?
These questions now hover over the looming impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.
The Senate has once again been transformed into an impeachment court. Senators who spend their days debating bills, attacking rivals and preparing for the next election are suddenly expected to become impartial judges. They wear robes instead of their usual barong or business suits. But aside from the costume change, what truly changes?
The answer is both simple and uncomfortable.
Legally, senators are expected to assume a quasi-judicial role. They take an oath to render “impartial justice.” They are expected to weigh evidence, hear arguments and rise above partisan loyalties. In theory, they cease to be politicians for the duration of the trial, instead becoming jurors who give verdicts based on truth and the Constitution.
In reality, however, senators do not enter the impeachment court as blank slates.
They carry political debts, ambitions, alliances, constituencies and calculations. Some may even harbor presidential aspirations. Others may seek committee chairmanships, protection from future political attacks, or alignment with the administration. Their nature doesn’t simply disappear because they change into judicial robes.
This is why impeachment has always been described as both a legal and political process.
The legal dimension lies in the presentation of evidence and constitutional standards. The political dimension lies in the fact that conviction ultimately depends on elected officials exercising judgment under the glare of public opinion and power politics. The challenge here is preventing politics from overwhelming justice.
As always, our country’s history offers sobering lessons.
The aborted impeachment trial of President Joseph Estrada in 2001 remains perhaps the most dramatic example. I remember those days vividly. The infamous refusal to open the “second envelope” became a defining national moment. Millions of Filipinos concluded that political loyalty had trumped the search for truth and chose to act on it instead of standing idly by. The result was not merely institutional embarrassment but a people’s movement via EDSA Dos, leading to the collapse of a presidency.
However, the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012 provided a different lesson. There, the proceedings demonstrated both the strengths and weaknesses of the process. Evidence and public scrutiny mattered, yes. But political alignments mattered too. After all, senators were not operating in a vacuum insulated from pressure. Malacañang influence, media narratives and public opinion formed part of the invisible courtroom, which, in some ways, seemed heavier than proof.
This is why the oft-repeated phrase “impeachment is political” should not be understood as a license for cynicism. Instead, it should be treated as a warning that institutions are only as strong as the character of those who inhabit them.
British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston famously declared in 1848: “Nations have no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual.”
The same realism often applies in politics. Alliances shift with astonishing speed. Yesterday’s allies become today’s prosecutors. Fierce rivals suddenly discover common cause. Principles are sometimes invoked sincerely and sometimes merely as convenient banners for political interest.
This fluidity is not unique to the Philippines. Democracies everywhere wrestle with the tension between principle and power. But there is a danger when the public becomes too accepting of naked political maneuvering. Once citizens assume that outcomes are predetermined by alliances rather than evidence, confidence in institutions erodes. The impeachment court risks becoming indistinguishable from partisan combat.
That would be disastrous for the Senate itself.
The institution is already under enormous strain. Public trust in democratic institutions worldwide has been declining. Social media has amplified outrage while weakening patience for nuance. Spectacle increasingly overwhelms substance. In such an environment, senators face enormous temptation to perform for political audiences rather than soberly evaluate evidence.
Yet impeachment was never intended to be a mere spectacle. The framers of constitutions envisioned it as an extraordinary mechanism — one reserved for grave abuses of public trust. It was designed not as a weapon for routine political warfare but as a constitutional safety valve.
And the question remains: Can the Philippine Senate do better this time?
It must, as the credibility of the institution may depend on it.
This does not require senators to abandon political instincts entirely, as that is an impossible expectation. But it does require discipline. It requires restraint in public pronouncements before evidence is fully presented. It requires intellectual honesty in evaluating testimony. Most of all, it requires recognition that senators, as jurors, are not merely deciding the fate of one official. They are actively shaping public faith in constitutional governance itself.
In moments like these, senators are not the only ones sitting in judgment over an impeached official. They should realize that the Filipino people are also judging them.
And history, unlike politics, has a longer memory.
