Impeaching impeachment

The midterm election is over, but the denigration of the members of the Duterte family has hardly ebbed. The calumny has not spared people who are close to former President Rodrigo Duterte, who was shanghaied to The Hague and handed over to the International Criminal Court on alleged crimes against humanity.

The arrest, being illegal, created a backlash against the administration-backed senatorial bets. Beyond that, however, is the affirmation of Vice President Sara Duterte’s incontrovertible destiny to be the next president of the country.

From both sides of the political spectrum, the prediction is that the impeachment trial is doomed. This sent Sen. Risa Hontiveros and the resurrected Leila de Lima ballistic.

The duo has been salivating to prosecute and to render judgement on VP Sara but that prospect is now slim in terms of the number of senators who will likely throw the charges in the garbage bin and on the matter of legitimacy since the 19th Congress will end sooner than the drooling Risa and Leila had hoped. There are legal luminaries, however, who assert that the trial will proceed.

Maybe yes, but then they are quiet over the fact that political numeric plays an essential role in realpolitik.

The Vice President, for her part, is ready for a bloodbath and has declared that she has no qualms about what her fate will be. Her metaphorical statement tells us that she will draw blood from her political adversaries before they can put her to the stake. We all know the vulnerabilities of her inquisitors and this will make the trial a blockbuster.

Let’s look at some of the issues in the Articles of Impeachment:

•Misuse of P612-million in confidential funds. This amount is so minuscule compared to the billions of pesos allocated to Marcos, Romualdez, department heads, and other functionaries of the government. The Quadcomm was on a fishing expedition but VP Sara can educate them on how government funds are expended besides exposing their own profligacy. This could boomerang on the Palace occupants and on the characters in the house of Romualdez. This matter is quite sensitive that last Tuesday, the Quadcomm put closure to its investigation on this issue.

•Bribery of a DepEd official who came to the Quadcomm probe with empty letter envelopes to prove her claim.

•Extrajudicial killings. This is the favorite subject of Leila de Lima. But what if VP Sara will ask her for a single piece of evidence to prove her allegations? What will De Lima present? She made camp for months in Davao City digging for the remains of what she said were EJK victims that she claimed were buried in an abandoned quarry. She produced nothing except for a badly deteriorated skeleton along with three sets of license plates that were not corroded. How can she prove that former President Duterte committed a crime against humanity?

For now, several quarters are impeaching the impeachment process and until the big fat lady sings, we won’t know if there will be a trial at all.