CATHOLIC prelates and other good-governance advocates worry about the recent leadership shakeup in the Senate, which is set to begin the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte tomorrow, May 18, after the articles of impeachment against her were passed by 257 members of the House of Representatives a week earlier.
Will the takeover of the chamber by senators seen as supporting Duterte and her father, former president and accused “crimes against humanity” perpetrator Rodrigo Duterte, block truth and justice in her trial? And will the verdict advance God’s will for the Philippines?
Notably, past impeachment trials were seen as failures. The 2001 proceedings against then-president Joseph Estrada abruptly ended when prosecutors from the House walked out after most senators barred the opening of an envelope said to contain incriminating evidence. The resulting uprising ousted Estrada.
And the 2012 trial of impeached chief justice Renato Corona was gravely tainted with reported budget allocations for senator-judges from then-president Benigno Aquino III’s illegal P157-billion Disbursement Acceleration Program — almost surely the largest malversation in Philippine history.
When flood grafters impeach
Critics of the Sara Duterte impeachments decry the widely reported budget allocation of P150 million each for the 215 representatives who voted to impeach her last year, and “for later release” outlays in the 2026 budget allegedly rewarding 257 legislators supporting the 2026 impeachment.
Last year’s releases included flood-control projects like those with billions of pesos in casino-laundered, suitcase-packed commissions to so-called proponent lawmakers who inserted the projects into the budget. So, lawmakers who collectively skimmed billions off public-works projects are among those who want the vice president ousted for alleged corruption amounting to far lesser amounts.
These legislators also escape prosecution and public censure for now, as the impeachment hogs the headlines, making Filipinos forget what the Trillion Peso Marches were all about. And maybe, just maybe, some or many flood-control proponents rejoined the impeachment bloc if scam charges are delayed or forgotten.
Justice suffers if voting to impeach gets budget inducements or prosecution relief. Truth is lost if facts are misleadingly presented in Congress and the media, as fellow Manila Times columnist Rigoberto Tiglao has pointed out several times. Among data distortions are wrongly portraying bank transactions as indicating net assets, lumping Sara Duterte’s finances with her husband’s, and citing data from the decades preceding her term when impeachment charges only cover her four years so far as vice president.
Impeachment proponents and most media have also headlined repeatedly adverse reports of state auditors on confidential funds allocated to the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education under Sara Duterte. But her replies and explanations get little coverage.
How many of you have read the explanation for fast-food brands listed as receiving confidential and intelligence payments? As Canada-based international lawyer, criminal law professor and former prosecutor Anthony Ludalvi Vista explained in October, to protect informants in reporting confidential and intelligence funds, “the names of people or places involved can be coded or redacted for security reasons” (“The truth about the VP’s ‘P125 million’ confidential funds,” https://tinyurl.com/5n79kaa8).
Hopefully, a prompt, speedy trial can present both sides of the accusations against the vice president, with her defense team having the last say. And early proceedings ending 18 months before the May 2028 polls would make them less susceptible to electioneering bombasts by prosecutors and senators seeking voter attention. It would also lessen the temptation to use the proceedings to pump out false accusations on national television against prospective candidates under the cover of parliamentary immunity.
What does God think?
So, what does heaven make of Sara Duterte’s impeachment and the Senate leadership change?
God wants truth and justice, for sure, which includes debunking any false accusations. Even more crucial to integrity in our land is probing and prosecuting perpetrators of tens of billions of pesos in infrastructure graft under this and past administrations — remember that?
If Sara Duterte’s impeachment leads to “trillion-peso” sleaze involving budget-insertion proponents in Congress, corrupt public-works bureaucrats and kickbacking contractors going unpunished, that is not what heaven wants.
And that may well happen if taking out Vice President Duterte from the 2028 presidential race — seen by analysts as the paramount objective in her two impeachments this year and last — brings an ally of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to Malacañang.
Indeed, after spending billions on failed campaigns to bring down Sara Duterte and boost then-speaker Martin Romualdez, then on the aborted 2024 Charter change scheme for a parliamentary system where he can rule, and finally on House impeachment votes in 2025 and now, successfully barring her from the presidency and electing the Marcos regime’s choice could then protect the schemers who put her or him in the Palace — all that would only reward and perpetuate scam-funded politicking.
That is hardly what God wants.
There’s more.
As this column predicted in March 2023, the month after the United States got access to nine bases of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) under the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) opposed by then-senator Marcos, but which he was pressured to implement as president, the Americans would move against Vice President Duterte to ensure continued use of the AFP facilities (“To keep its EDCA bases, will the US take on Sara?” https://tinyurl.com/2s3fr5bu).
So, even if President Marcos wanted to maintain his alliance with Sara Duterte, which could have stayed in power for over a decade, his own camp moved against her after March 2023, when then-US State Department senior official Victoria Nuland, who was involved in US efforts to oust Ukraine’s Russia-friendly leader in 2014, visited Manila.
Washington fears that Sara Duterte would oppose US forces using EDCA bases, which her father called US “platforms for war” which would bring “missiles raining on us” in a March 2023 interview with pastor Apollo Quiboloy.
Besides nuclear-capable American warships and warplanes using AFP facilities, Uncle Sam wants to deploy intermediate-range missiles in secret locations nationwide, threatening Chinese shipping and most of China from our land. We would then be pummeled like Arab nations with American bases in current US-Israel hostilities with Iran (https://tinyurl.com/2v3yxt9s).
Is that what God wants for His beloved Philippines?
