Sara turns to High Court, challenges impeachment

Vice President Sara Duterte went to the Supreme Court Tuesday for the second legal challenge to her impeachment.

The filing of the petition for certiorari and prohibition on Tuesday was confirmed by Supreme Court spokesperson Atty. Camille Ting, who said the High Court received Duterte’s petition but it was not discussed during the en banc session the same day.

The Vice President, in her petition, questioned the validity and constitutionality of the fourth impeachment complaint that was transmitted by the House of Representatives to the Senate.

“The petition seeks a judicial intervention from the High Court to uphold due process and raises serious legal and constitutional concerns,” said the Fortun, Narvasa and Salazar law firm that is representing Duterte.

The law firm, in a statement, added, “The Vice President, for her part, trusts that the Supreme Court will exercise its constitutional duty to safeguard democratic principles and uphold the rule of law.”

The petition named Senate President Francis Escudero, House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez and House Secretary General Reginald Velasco as respondents.

Lawyers also go to SC

Meanwhile, a group of lawyers supporting Duterte on Tuesday also filed in the Supreme Court a separate petition to toss out the impeachment complaint and prevent the Senate from proceeding with a trial, citing the lack of time devoted to the complaint’s evaluation in the House of Representatives, where it was introduced and passed on the same day.

Lawyers Israelito Torreon and Martin Delgra III argued in their petition for certiorari that the House committed a grave abuse of discretion when it issued the articles of impeachment against Duterte.

They averred that the initiation of the impeachment complaint was procedurally defective, constitutionally infirm, and jurisdictionally void.

Torreon said the impeachment complaint was processed without prior committee evaluation and with defects in the verification process.

He explained that the verification process requires that the allegations must be personally known or had been personally studied by the congressmen who signed the complaint.

‘Taken out of context’

Duterte faces a Senate trial on charges of “violation of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust, graft and corruption and other high crimes.” Among the crimes outlined is an alleged assassination plot against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and Speaker Romualdez.

The Vice President has since insisted that her remarks on having the three assassinated were she killed first were taken out of context.

Father is one of her lawyers

The father of the Vice President, former President Rodrigo Duterte, was one of the lawyers who signed as legal counsel her petition before the Supreme Court

The patriarch wrote the Vice President’s 36-page petition for certiorari and prohibition, along with five other lawyers.

The Vice President asked the High Court to issue a final injunction, nullify and set aside the fourth impeachment complaint against her, invoking the one-year ban.

Under the Constitution, no impeachment proceeding shall be initiated against the same official more than once within a year.

The House of Representatives impeached Duterte on 5 February with over 200 lawmakers endorsing the complaint.

The articles of impeachment were transmitted to the Senate on the same day, but the upper chamber adjourned without tackling the impeachment complaint.

Senate President Francis Escudero said Duterte’s impeachment trial would most likely start under the 20th Congress after the State of the Nation Address (SoNA) by President Marcos on 21 July.

The SC en banc last Tuesday directed the Senate to comment on the petition seeking to compel the upper chamber to immediately begin the Vice President’s impeachment trial.

Lame excuses

Meanwhile, an opposition lawmaker on Wednesday castigated the Senate for its purported lame excuses to delay the impeachment trial of the Vice President, arguing that the four-month congressional break should be ample time to hold the proceedings.

Kabataan Partylist Rep. Raoul Manuel, one of the endorsers of the articles of impeachment, insisted there is no reason for the Senate not to convene as an impeachment court since aside from the fact that the trial is not legislative in nature, half of the senators who are not running in the midterm elections have flexible schedules.

“If the Senate wants, they can hold the trial within the months of February, March, April and May. Right now, that it’s on break, both houses of Congress — the Senate and House — are doing nothing,” he said in Filipino.

“It’s very unfair to the people who work hard, while the Senate can sit on the job for four months. They will say they are busy? Let’s be honest here as members of the legislature. The senators do not have a fixed schedule [during this break],” he added.

Congress is currently on recess for the election campaign season and will convene on 2 June, after the 12 May midterm polls.

Senate President Escudero has been adamant that trying Duterte during the congressional break “legally cannot be done” since the articles of impeachment, which will prompt them to convene as a trial court, were not referred to the plenary before Congress adjourned on 5 February.

The House of Representatives impeached Duterte on the same day with 215 lawmakers, or more than double the required one-third votes (102 signatories), voting to endorse the impeachment complaint.

According to Manuel, the Senate cannot cite the congressional break as an excuse because an impeachment trial “is a separate function from legislating” and senators shall immediately sit as judges as mandated by the Constitution.

“The duty of the senators as members of an impeachment court is stated in the Constitution. [They keep on] making excuses like there is a calendar, they are in recess, but the ones who approve that calendar are only the legislators themselves,” Manuel averred.

“This means that if [they] really want to set a schedule, approve a schedule for an impeachment trial, [they] can do it without having to hide behind any other excuses and even use the rules to sit on their job,” he said.

Undue delay

In a separate interview, former lawmaker and human rights lawyer Neri Colmenares acknowledged that impeachments in the past had incurred delays where it took “at least a few days up to a maximum of one and a half months” before a trial could be convened.

He said that four to five months was an “undue” delay.

“It’s a command to the Senate that once the articles of impeachment are transmitted to it, it shall convene an impeachment court and hold a trial forthwith,” he said.

Colmenares added, “But the Constitution does not allow for a four to five-month delay because forthwith to us means as soon as possible without delay.”