The election dust has settled and it should be clearer now for the Marcos Jr. administration to see that most likely the Vice President, Sara Duterte, won’t be convicted by the Senate impeachment court.

Sixteen votes are needed to convict Duterte on grounds of betrayal of public trust, culpable violation of the Constitution, bribery, graft and corruption, and other high crimes — charges included in the four cases that were filed at the House of Representatives and on which bases she was impeached last February.

She now awaits a trial in the impeachment court at the Senate which will most likely take place in July or August. If she is convicted, she will be disqualified from holding public office.

In the 24-member Senate, she would need only nine votes for acquittal. Let’s see, who among those who won in the just held midterm elections are certain to give her those votes?

Right off, that would be Duterte loyalists Bong Go, Rogelio “Bato” de la Rosa, Imee Marcos, Rodante Marcoleta, and Camille Villar. Then there are holdovers Robin Padilla, the Cayetano siblings Alan Peter and his sister Pia, along with Mark Villar and Jinggoy Estrada, who has publicly expressed sympathies for the Vice President. That’s already more than the nine votes she needs to stay in her post.

At best the only ultra-certain thumbs down will be coming from Senator Risa Hontiveros. Perhaps, based on their past histories, Kiko Pangilinan and Bam Aquino will vote the same way, although they have said they won’t be prejudiced against Duterte.

And then there’s this talk going around that Aquino’s stunning Senate comeback was realized through a massive bloc vote from the Iglesia ni Cristo. Everyone knows about the INC’s sympathies for the Dutertes, thus, what if the Felix Manalo-founded sect puts pressure on Aquino to vote for acquittal?

What this means is that, other than the dyed-in-the-wool Duterte loyalists and opposition senators Hontiveros and Pangilinan, no one really knows how the rest of the senators will vote.

But here’s the thing: the senators being political animals it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to imagine them testing the waters before they cast their respective votes for or against the Vice President.

After seeing the results of the midterm elections, senators with further ambitions will most likely be thinking very hard before voting to convict Sara Duterte for fear of alienating parts of Mindanao and the Visayas where the Dutertes still hold sway.

However things may be, it is crucial for President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. and his camp to make certain the Vice President would be rendered incapable of running for the presidency in 2028.

Why? Because at stake isn’t just the political survival of the Marcoses, but their very own lives as well.

Remember when the Vice President in November 2024, angered by the detention of her chief of staff by congressmen piqued by her failure to respond to queries on the Vice President’s alleged misuse of funds, seethed online, brazenly baring that she had contracted a killer to liquidate the President, his wife, and Speaker Martin Romualdez if anything fatal happened to her?

“No joke, no joke, and he said yes,” she crowed.

Now, what if she crosses a street and is run over by a jeepney, or slips and falls down the stairs, or gets into any other type of fatal accident? Will that then trigger the assassination of the President, his wife, and cousin Speaker Romualdez?

Perhaps detractors of the administration should be aware that the President, no matter if his allies in the Senate fail to evict his arch-enemy from her post, still wields tremendous power which he can very well use to defend himself, his family, and close allies against his enemies.

Though perceived as a lame duck (and he could very well be that), he could nevertheless use the executive’s authority to disburse funds and appoint or replace people in government posts, as well as execute policies that would allow him to mobilize resources to suit his purposes until the end of his term.

President Marcos Jr. knows there’s nary a chance of a reconciliation with the Dutertes and their camp who blame him for the incarceration of the former president, Rodrigo Duterte, at The Hague.

It would serve him well, at this point, to forge new alliances and employ strategic measures to effectively weaken his foes enough to quash the possibility of their returning to power in 2028.

If all else fails — if the Vice President escapes conviction in impeachment court — House prosecutors could file a plunder case against her with the Office of the Ombudsman.

That might not stop Sara Duterte — easily the most formidable, most decidedly determined contender for the presidency at this point in time — from running in 2028, but it certainly won’t be a walk in the park for her, with opponents just as motivated in guaranteeing hers would be a campaign fraught with challenges.