Political discretion

Political discretion | Daily Tribune

Three days ago, the Supreme Court ordered the House of Representatives to respond within 10 days to Sara Duterte’s petition seeking to stop her impeachment. The petition questions the constitutionality of the House’s actions, alleging the chamber abused its discretion in applying its own rules.

The 2003 landmark case Francisco vs. House of Representatives defined the term “initiated” in the context of the Constitution’s one-year bar on impeachment, which was designed to prevent the harassment of impeachable officials through successive complaints. But what if the harassment cuts the other way — when allies of an impeachable official file sham complaints with weak or no evidence to deliberately trigger the one-year bar? This tactic could weaponize the House’s own rules to block legitimate complaints, not to hold officials accountable but to protect them.

If the House Rules on Impeachment were interpreted to require the mechanical, automatic referral of any verified complaint to the Speaker — without discretion — the impeachment process would be vulnerable to such exploitation. A well-timed but baseless complaint could be filed simply to bar stronger complaints from being entertained for a year. The 10-session day window for the Speaker to include the complaint in the Order of Business is a safeguard against indefinite delays, not a built-in filter for meritless complaints. The Constitution’s one-year bar would end up shielding impeachable officials instead of exposing them to accountability.

This is the heart of Sara Duterte’s petition, buried beneath what can only be described as a word salad.

She accuses the House Secretary General of deliberately delaying the transmission of three earlier complaints filed in December 2024 to give way to a fourth complaint, filed on 5 February 2025, with 215 endorsements — enough to guarantee impeachment. Her legal team argues that the supposed delay was a tactical maneuver to sidestep the one-year bar.

The irony is that if anyone should be pushing for a strict interpretation of the House rule requiring “immediate referral,” it should be the complainants, not Sara Duterte who has everything to gain from a procedural derailment.

More importantly, the word “immediate” in the House Rules is not a constitutional guarantee but a procedural directive subject to the House’s political discretion. It is different from the word “forthwith,” which the Constitution uses in reference to the Senate’s duty to act on an impeachment once it is transmitted — leaving no room for delay.

The House, in contrast, enjoys exclusive power to initiate an impeachment, including the authority to weigh, consolidate, and prioritize complaints before referring them to the plenary. Without this discretion, the impeachment process would become a conveyor belt for nuisance complaints, undermining its very purpose.

Was there an abuse of discretion on the part of the House? It will be difficult for the Supreme Court to rule that there was.

First, the period between the earlier complaints and the 5 February endorsement included a month-long recess, limiting the available session days. The supposed “delay” was not perpetual or unreasonable.

Second, Secretary General Reginald Velasco publicly explained that his office held off on transmitting the earlier complaints to allow the House legal team to verify the complaints and consolidate the strongest grounds — a sound decision given that the House is responsible for prosecuting the case.

The result speaks for itself: the final complaint is a more evidence-driven, streamlined version of the earlier filings, with detailed references to properties, bank accounts, and the misuse of public funds amounting to ₱P612.5 million, backed by actual audit findings, among other things.

Far from being rushed, the complaint against Sara Duterte is more substantive and specific than previous high-profile impeachment complaints, including that against Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2011.

The SALN charge against Corona only gained traction during the trial, when his undeclared dollar accounts were exposed — evidence that was not in the complaint itself. In contrast, the charges against Duterte were supported by concrete documentation at the point of filing.

In sum, the Secretary General’s actions served a legislative purpose — streamlining multiple complaints into a stronger, more coherent case — rather than arbitrarily favoring one complaint over others. The House’s exercise of its political discretion falls squarely within its constitutional mandate to initiate an impeachment, which is not within the judiciary’s power of review.

The greatest delay in this impeachment process has been caused by Sara Duterte herself — first through her refusal to cooperate with the investigations, then by weaponizing the courts to obstruct accountability.

The Supreme Court should not lend its hand to a ploy aimed at shielding Sara Duterte from the very process designed to hold her to account.