The trial

Come now, it seems that the collapse of the economy, the moral degeneration, the political prostitution of Congress, and the future of the country hang on the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte.

It’s phantasmagoric to see a developing scenario where people of opposing ideologies, adversarial political parties, an intellectual elite with an overdose of hubris, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and even the aristocratic Makati Business Club came together in a grotesque clique to demand the impeachment trial of VP Sara.

It is as if the panacea to the problems besetting the country hangs on Sara’s trial because they believe that the P125-million confidential and intelligence fund matters more than the billions of CIF of President Bongbong Marcos, House Speaker Romualdez and other government functionaries, the bribery that led to the impeachment of VP Sara, and other shenanigans in the bureaucracy.

The House of Romualdez, in dalliance with moribund political groups to include the communist fronts, came up with articles of impeachment that were crafted and submitted to the Senate under insidious circumstances. The first complaint was filed on 2 December 2024.

Then the HoR filed and voted on another set of complaints last 5 February, delivering all four complaints just minutes before they went on recess and one day before Congress went on break to give way to the midterm elections.

Thereafter, the complainants demanded the Senate immediately set the trial in motion, banking on the word “forthwith” in the Constitution as their basis.

Last Tuesday, the senators, this time sitting as judges, put the trial in motion, with 18 voting for and five against to remand the articles of impeachment back to the House of Romualdez for glaring infirmities.

Senator Bong Go, responding to the motion of Sen. Bato dela Rosa, proposed to “return” the complaints to the HoR, and later Sen. Alan Cayetano proposed an amendment to Bato’s motion to “remand” the infirm articles of impeachment back to the House, which Bato accepted.

This is not to mean that the trial will not push through. But this sends a strong message to members of the Lower House that they cannot dictate on or bamboozle the Senate into their chicanery. Maybe this time this would temper the elitism of the legal luminaries from our leading universities and that aside from “forthwith” they can add to their lexicon “remand.”

Never mind the bishops. Forgive them for they do not know what they did.

As for the itch of Partylist Rep-elect Leila de Lima to prosecute VP Sara, that will have to wait for now. Her favorite subject is extrajudicial killings and the mythical Davao Death Squad. She has been at it since 2009 when she was chairperson of the Human Rights Commission but she has not produced a single piece of evidence to buttress her claims. It will be interesting to see what she will bring to the impeachment court this time.

In the case of Sen. Risa Hontiveros, she will have to live with the fear that while VP Sara remains in power the perceived threat of a full-blown Duterte comeback is “still a very real and present danger.”

Her phobia of Sara’s rise to the totem pole of power is actually what prodded the House of Representatives, aside from the “incentives,” to impeach the VP. This is the same irrational fear the legal luminaries and the politicized clerics suffer from.