THE Senate impeachment court has more reason to worry about the conduct of its own members than about the public statements of House prosecutor Rep. Terry Ridon and private prosecutor Jay Tolosa. Its credibility is being eroded by senators who appear quick to discipline prosecutors, eager to rescue a powerful witness and strangely ineffective when the respondent herself attacks their integrity.
An impeachment court earns respect through the quality of its judgment. Senators cannot demand public deference while giving people reasons to doubt whether they have read the charges they are supposed to adjudicate. Neither can they invoke judicial dignity selectively, becoming stern when prosecutors speak but accommodating when Vice President Sara Duterte disparages the institution trying her.
Consider the firearms testimony. Some senators challenged its relevance by focusing on whether the weapons proved ill-gotten wealth. That question is legitimate. Their mistake was treating it as if it exhausted Article 2. The article also alleges failure to fully and truthfully disclose the assets of the vice president and her spouse in her statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs).
The distinction matters. An asset can be lawfully acquired and still be improperly omitted from a SALN. Evidence establishing ownership therefore has a purpose separate from proving that the purchase money came from corruption. A witness identifying registered firearms can help establish what properties must be compared with the respondent’s sworn declarations. Dismissing that testimony as irrelevant bypasses an allegation the senators are duty-bound to examine.
This does not mean that identifying firearms automatically proves nondisclosure, much less an impeachable offense. The prosecution must establish the relevant ownership, reporting obligations and actual omissions. The defense can contest those propositions, including whether the assets were adequately covered by existing entries. But these are questions requiring examination of evidence. They cannot be answered by pretending that Article 2 contains only an unexplained wealth charge.
When senator-judges flatten a charge into a convenient talking point, they mislead the public. Their interventions carry the authority of the court and can turn an incomplete reading into an apparently settled conclusion. Citizens watching the trial may understandably assume that senators know the articles. That makes careless pronouncements particularly damaging. Judicial robes increase the obligation to understand. They do not excuse superficiality.
The treatment of Davao City Mayor Sebastian “Baste” Duterte reveals another troubling tendency. Several senators offered sympathetic explanations for his professed lack of knowledge about the GenCorp contracts. Mayors are busy. They delegate. They cannot inspect every document. These observations may be true, but reciting them does not establish that his reliance on subordinates was reasonable in the particular transactions being examined.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s invocation of the Arias doctrine supplied legal vocabulary for this accommodation. In Arias v. Sandiganbayan, the Supreme Court rejected a criminal conviction resting on inadequate evidence and recognized that heads of offices must reasonably rely on subordinates. The decision did not establish that ignorance absolves an executive. Its reasoning expressly contemplated additional circumstances that would require closer scrutiny.
Applying Arias therefore requires examining what an official did, what information was available, and whether there were reasons to inquire further. Delegation alone does not settle those questions. Offering the doctrine before adequately testing its factual basis risks teaching public officials that responsibility disappears once a subordinate handles the paperwork. That is a particularly disturbing lesson from a court convened to enforce public accountability.
More fundamentally, any possible Arias argument would concern Baste’s own responsibility. Sara Duterte is the respondent. Her brother’s claimed ignorance cannot answer whether she retained a prohibited financial interest in a company receiving government contracts. Article VII, Section 13 bars the vice president from being financially interested, directly or indirectly, in government contracts during her tenure. A mayor’s reliance on subordinates cannot erase that constitutional prohibition.
The court must weigh her SALN declarations, the corporate records and the contracts, including any discrepancies among them. It must determine what interest existed and when. Baste’s statement that he would not have allowed the contracts had he known of his sister’s interest deserves scrutiny within that inquiry. Senators should pursue its implications instead of allowing sympathy for his managerial predicament to displace the charge against her.
There is also reason to examine whether some interventions reflect personal identification with the witness. Senators who previously served as local executives may find his account familiar. Familiarity can assist understanding, but it can also encourage self-justification. The court cannot become a venue where senators who are former mayors validate their own practices by reassuring another mayor that not knowing is simply how government works.
The same discipline should govern the firearms discussion. Senators who own guns must avoid allowing their own reporting habits to shape their reading of the charge. Their personal comfort with how assets are declared cannot substitute for a careful assessment of the respondent’s declarations and obligations.
Against this solicitude stands the court’s treatment of Ridon and Tolosa. Both were required to explain public remarks under the sub judice rule. The court has authority to enforce its rules, and prosecutors must observe them. But enforcement demands consistency. Sara Duterte’s allegation that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. controls senators directly and that the court proceedings are a mere show challenges their independence. It deserves a response commensurate with the court’s professed concern for its integrity.
Criticism of a court is protected and should not automatically invite punishment. Yet senators can require allegations to be substantiated, explain the standards governing public remarks, and apply those standards fairly. Appearing helpless before the respondent’s attacks while admonishing prosecutors projects selective courage. It invites precisely the doubts about impartiality that judicial discipline is supposed to prevent.
Ridon and Tolosa cannot repair the court’s credibility for it. Nor can warnings against them conceal its members’ failures. Senators must read the complete charges, test legal doctrines against the facts, and not use their own experiences as legal standards. The Senate will undermine itself as an impeachment court if its members keep giving the public reasons to believe that their judgment is clouded by their own convenience and fears.
The author is a professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and vice chairman of the board of PTVNI.
