THE ongoing impeachment trial has exposed an important philosophical divide. It is not simply a disagreement over procedure. It is a disagreement over what impeachment itself is.
On one side are those who insist that the proceedings should resemble an ordinary court trial, governed as closely as possible by the technical rules of evidence and procedure. On the other are those, including several senator-judges, argue that while due process must always be respected, impeachmenshould not become so legalistic that it defeats its own constitutional purpose.
I find myself firmly in the latter camp.
The Constitution makes impeachment a political process. The Senate has the sole power to try and decide impeachment cases. The Rules of Court do not govern impeachment by their own force. They apply only suppletorily, that is, only to fill procedural gaps and only insofar as they are consistent with the Senate’s own rules and the constitutional character of impeachment.
That distinction goes to the very heart of what impeachment seeks to accomplish.
An impeachment trial is not primarily about determining criminal guilt. Nor is it an ordinary civil dispute. The central question is whether a public official remains fit to continue holding one of the highest offices of public trust. That inquiry is constitutional, institutional and ultimately political.
This is why I worry whenever every exchange in the impeachment court is measured against the rigid standards of courtroom litigation.
Assume that senators are permitted to ask only narrowly evidentiary questions during witness examinations. Assume further that every attempt by counsel to explain how a piece of evidence fits into the overall theory of the case is objected to as an improper argument. Finally, assume that the Senate follows the Rules of Court by analogy and requires each side to make a formal offer of evidence only after resting its case.
Under the current timetable, the prosecution estimates it will need 62 hearing days to present its evidence. The defense says it will need another 30. With hearings held only three days a week and a Christmas recess expected, the prosecution’s formal offer may not come until the end of the year, while the defense’s could stretch into February or even March next year. Only then would the Senate hear the complete closing arguments that weave together every witness, document and exhibit into a coherent narrative.
That means Filipinos would spend the better part of eight months watching fragments.
One witness today. Another witness next week. A document here. A video there. Yet the public would not hear the complete constitutional story explaining how these pieces fit together until months later.
That is not transparency. It is merely televising a process while withholding its meaning.
In a proceeding of such national importance, public understanding is part of the constitutional process. Impeachment is conducted openly because the people are expected to judge not only the evidence but also the institutions entrusted with enforcing accountability. A process that ordinary citizens cannot meaningfully follow risks losing public confidence, even if it remains procedurally impeccable.
The consequences are serious.
The public would be left to interpret evidence without the framework needed to understand its significance. Media organizations, commentators and partisan influencers would inevitably fill that vacuum with speculation, selective reporting and competing narratives. Public engagement could decline because the proceedings would appear technical, repetitive and increasingly disconnected from the constitutional question that truly matters: whether the respondent remains fit to continue holding public office. In the end, the impeachment trial could become transparent only in form, but opaque in substance.
This is precisely why the calls of several people, including legal experts, to simplify the proceedings deserve serious consideration.
Simplification does not mean abandoning due process. It does not mean lowering evidentiary standards or depriving the respondent of the opportunity to challenge the evidence. It simply recognizes that impeachment is not an ordinary lawsuit. It keeps impeachment understandable to the Filipino people it ultimately serves.
The Filipino people are not passive spectators. They are the ultimate sovereign in whose name public officials hold office. They are entitled to understand why a witness matters, why a document is important and why a particular statement bears upon the respondent’s fitness to remain in office.
Explaining the relevance of evidence is not the same as prematurely delivering a closing argument.
When a senator asks why a particular act constitutes an impeachable offense, the answer necessarily goes beyond identifying an exhibit. It requires explaining how that evidence fits into the constitutional theory of accountability. To suppress that explanation merely because it resembles advocacy is to confuse legitimate clarification with impermissible argument.
Evidence derives meaning from context. That is even more true in impeachment, where the inquiry concerns patterns of conduct, abuse of public trust and continuing fitness for office. If every attempt to provide that context is curtailed, the proceedings become unintelligible not only to the public but even to those tasked with deciding the case.
The legitimacy of an impeachment verdict depends not only on the votes cast by senator-judges but also on the confidence of the Filipino people that the process was fair, understandable and faithful to its constitutional purpose. A proceeding consumed by procedural disputes risks alienating the very public whose trust it seeks to restore.
The Senate should never become merely another courtroom wearing judicial robes. It is an impeachment court performing a constitutional function unlike any exercised by our regular courts. The Rules of Court are valuable guides, but they were never intended to become procedural chains. They are suppletory because the Constitution recognized that impeachment demands a different balance between legal precision and democratic accountability.
If the proceedings become so technical that the Filipino people cannot understand what they are watching until months after the evidence has been presented, then we have mistaken the process for purpose.
The Constitution did not create impeachment to showcase legal craftsmanship. It created impeachment to hold the nation’s highest public officials accountable before the people they serve. That purpose should never be lost beneath the weight of excessive legalism.
The author is a professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and vice chairman of the board of PTVNI.
