Vice President Sara Duterte was urged to refrain from “abusing legal processes” by seeking the intervention of the Supreme Court (SC) and the Ombudsman to avoid her looming impeachment trial in the Senate.

House Deputy Majority Leader Paolo Ortega V made the call after Duterte and Mindanao lawyers petitioned the high court to halt the impeachment proceedings, citing its alleged unconstitutionality, including violating the one-year bar rule.

The petitions followed the filing before the Ombudsman of falsification of legislative documents and graft charges against House leaders in connection with the reported insertion of a whopping P241 billion in the bicameral report of this year’s budget.

“This is a clear abuse of legal processes. Instead of addressing the serious allegations of corruption and misuse of public funds, the Vice President and her camp are wasting the time of our courts with frivolous cases designed to harass those who simply did their duty,” Ortega lamented.

The La Union lawmaker added, “We see this for what it is — an attempt to intimidate the House, divert attention from the issues, and create noise to mislead the public.”

Both Duterte and a group of Mindanao lawyers allied with her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, asked the SC last week to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the impeachment trial, which, if it leads to a conviction, could permanently bar the vice president from holding public office.

They argued that the articles of impeachment submitted by the House to the Senate were defective, thus must be nullified.

Duterte asserted that the House leadership and House Secretary General Reginald Velasco committed “grave abuse of discretion” for withholding the first three impeachment complaints against her to circumvent the initiation prescribed by the Constitution, from which a one-year bar would be reckoned.

She said Velasco “deliberately [froze] the entire initiation and impeachment process” by waiting for the fourth impeachment complaint, rendering the constitutional one-year ban “futile and meaningless.”

The fourth impeachment complaint was initiated and signed by 215 lawmakers during the last session day of Congress on 5 February, two months after the first three separate complaints were filed in December.

Insertions

Prior to going to the SC, Duterte allies, led by Davao del Norte Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez, pressed charges against House leaders, including Speaker Martin Romualdez, for “legally” inserting P241 billion in the “blank items” of the bicam report of the 2025 budget despite it having been ratified by both houses of Congress.

They also prayed that the lawmakers be placed under preventive suspension.

Alvarez earlier dismissed claims that the filing of charges was meant to distract the public from the impeachment, which House leaders countered was aimed at disrupting the work of Congress ahead of preparations for the trial.

“These intimidation tactics will not succeed… We will not allow anyone — no matter how powerful — to evade scrutiny,” Ortega stated.

Nonetheless, Ortega contended that “no amount of legal theatrics can erase the facts [that] there were serious and questionable transactions in the vice president’s use of confidential funds and in the Department of Education under her watch.”

“If the vice president is truly innocent, she should face the charges head-on and explain herself to the Filipino people instead of resorting to harassment tactics. The public deserves the truth, not distractions,” he stressed.

Earlier, Senior Deputy Speaker Aurelio Gonzales, Deputy Speaker David Suarez, and Assistant Majority Leader Jude Acidre branded Duterte’s petition to the SC as a “desperate attempt to evade accountability” and a blatant effort to undermine the trial before it formally begins.

Moreover, they pointed out that there is no need to run to the courts if Duterte’s camp is confident that they can disprove the corruption allegations and serious issues leveled against her.