Impeachment turn

Impeachment turn | Daily Tribune

Impeaching Vice President Sara Duterte has taken the decisive turn to when it will happen.

Impeaching the Veep, therefore, is not a question of why she needs to be impeached but of when is the best time to impeach her.

The question, in fact, is left unasked after President Marcos Jr. directed his congressional allies not to waste time impeaching her since in his view “in the larger scheme of things, Sara is unimportant.”

On first impression, the President saying the Veep is “unimportant” sounds matter-of-fact but it suggests ridiculing sarcasm.

Surprisingly, the Veep has no arresting riposte to the President’s sneer. At most, Ms. Duterte’s allies could only muster the suspicion that Marcos’ move is to avoid “being accused of masterminding” the impeachment.

Nonetheless, Ms. Duterte and her allies do have cause for worry.

While Marcos’s appeal sounded definitive enough, he also didn’t plainly say that impeachment was only on hold for the meantime and that he wouldn’t silently instigate any future impeachment should it become politically necessary. A fact not lost on his congressional allies even if they chorused that impeachment isn’t in the cards.

In fact, when House leaders said impeachment was not in their present agenda they also made it abundantly clear that if an impeachment complaint is filed in the next month or so the House “has a constitutional duty to act on an impeachment complaint filed by ordinary citizens against impeachable officials.”

In effect, the House’s ambiguity meant they immediately saw the President’s view on the Veep’s impeachment as a matter of timing, even without the President directly admitting it.

What then presumably explains why the Chief Executive is patiently waiting for the right time and why he’s willing to gamble with attrition warfare to squeeze the Veep further rather than immediately scoring a decisive blow against his rampaging erstwhile ally?

The President may have various reasons for his patience, most of them obvious.

Not least of those reasons is probably the fact that, as a colleague of mine notes, “time is the main obstacle to an effective and workable impeachment complaint against” the Veep.

If, for instance, an impeachment complaint is filed now, Congress has barely two months to pursue it since by February Congress will adjourn for the May 2025 midterm elections.

Two months plainly aren’t enough for a politically charged impeachment of Sara Duterte. Historically, past impeachment proceedings against officials of lower rank took at least five to six months, from the filing of the complaint to trial.

Moreover, the President is probably biding his time to ensure Ms. Duterte’s impeachment will be a foregone conclusion. This is because should the President’s allies dominate the forthcoming midterms, the President will consolidate his hold on Congress, especially the Senate.

Consolidating the Senate is crucial. As matters now stand, if Ms. Duterte is impeached, she probably has enough allies in the upper chamber to derail a full-blown Senate trial. This would increase the risk she’ll be able to recover from her declining political stock and even raise it again to unimaginable heights.

At the same time, the proceedings would enable Ms. Duterte not only to consolidate her dedicated mass base but even to widen it.

So much so that it might jeopardize the midterms, where many at the moment believe the President’s allies are a shoo-in.

Buying time, therefore, is all about cautiously assessing and judging Ms. Duterte’s remaining political clout and blunting whatever tactical maneuvers she may deploy to damage the crucial midterms.

Tempting, of course, is the fact that Ms. Duterte is now perceptively in a self-destruct mode. Fairly speaking, her tantrums not only expose her pugnacious political persona, but more importantly show Ms. Duterte is only relying on her loyal supporters to defend her stubborn dismissals of transparency and accountability regarding her confidential funds.

But, it seems this administration confidently believes time is on its side and that holding off Ms. Duterte’s impeachment isn’t risky.