House prosecution team likely to face reshuffle

The composition of the group of House lawmakers tasked to prosecute Vice President Sara Duterte is poised to undergo changes when the 20th Congress officially convenes in late July, with a new batch of legislators expected to take over, a House prosecutor said Friday.

Bukidnon Rep. Keith Flores stated that since the House has transitioned into a new Congress, the 11-member prosecution team elected in the 19th Congress may be replaced by a majority vote of the present Congress. The lawmaker himself is still uncertain whether he will be reappointed as part of the new prosecution panel, given the current composition of the House.

“The Senate is a continuing body, but the House is not… It’s gonna be nominated and elected by the majority. So we don’t know yet,” he said in an interview. “So let's see what happens at the 20th Congress.”

House prosecutor Ysabel Zamora, on the other hand, doesn’t see the need for a reelection of prosecutors in the present Congress, suggesting that a shuffle in the panel is highly unlikely.

“On a personal note, I don’t think that there should be a new election of prosecutors. In any case, it can be easily ratified by the 20th Congress,” Zamora said in an interview on Thursday.

Legal luminaries Leila de Lima and Chel Diokno, who won congressional seats in the 12 May polls, had already been tapped by former House Speaker Martin Romualdez to join the prosecution to replace two prosecutors who lost their reelection bids.

Flores and Zamora both retain their seats in the 20th Congress. The seven other prosecutors — Representatives Marcelino Libanan, Romeo Acop, Arnan Panaligan, Lorenz Defensor, Rodge Gutierrez, Gerville Luistro, and Joel Chua — also won reelection.

The Senate took more than four months from receiving the verified impeachment complaint from the House on 5 February before constituting itself as a court, only to remand the case back to the House on 10 June, a day before the 19th Congress adjourned sine die. This has triggered public backlash and speculations that the delay was deliberate and meant to kill the trial.

In remanding the articles of impeachment, the Senate impeachment court ordered the House to submit a certification that it did not violate Article XI, Section 3, Paragraph 5, which prohibits the filing of more than one impeachment case against the same official within a one-year period.

In addition, it directed the House to issue a manifestation that it is still willing to pursue the impeachment case in the present 20th Congress, which will officially convene on 28 July, coinciding with the President’s State of the Nation Address.

The House is still awaiting the formal organization of the 20th Congress to decide whether to complete the required certification by the Senate impeachment court to proceed with the trial. Flores said that no certification can be done yet until the 20th Congress is officially convened.

The House has deferred acceptance of the remanded impeachment complaint, maintaining that it did not circumvent the one-year bar.

Duterte’s lawyers, however, argued otherwise. They petitioned for the dismissal of the impeachment complaint, accusing the House of violating the one-year prohibition, asserting that the complaint transmitted to the Senate on 5 February was the fourth petition lodged against her in a span of only two months.

The House prosecution panel insisted that initiation only occurred when the fourth impeachment complaint was verified and signed by at least 215 members of the entire House. The figure was more than double the one-third vote (102 signatories) required for an impeachment complaint, allowing it to bypass committee hearings and be transmitted directly to the Senate for trial.

Duterte was the first second-highest official impeached by the House on grounds of graft and corruption, bribery, betrayal of public trust, culpable violation of the Constitution, and other high crimes.

The seven articles of impeachment were primarily anchored on the supposed misappropriation of P612.5 million in confidential funds allocated to her office and the Department of Education during her tenure as its secretary, as well as her alleged kill plot against President Marcos Jr.’s family.

VP Duterte has long denied the corruption allegations involving her confidential funds. She likewise asserted that her assassination remarks against former ally-turned-foe Marcos were merely taken out of context.