The House of Representatives will not uphold the rule of law by futilely challenging the unanimous Supreme Court decision to invalidate Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment.

It would be a waste of time for Congress to pursue an effort that does not contribute to the development goals in the final stretch of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s term.

The useless House effort is also a reflection of its inability to accept a crushing defeat, one it brought upon itself after acting on the half-baked campaign of a cabal of left-wing destabilizers to oust the Vice President.

It indicated “exhausting its available legal remedies” to resuscitate the process that the Supreme Court found unconstitutional from the beginning.

Incompetence killed the House effort, as indicated in the majority opinion, which stated, “Our ruling does not absolve petitioner Duterte from any of the charges.”

It added that ruling on the charges against VP Duterte can only be accomplished through another impeachment process, followed by a trial and conviction by the Senate.

The caveat in the decision is that “new impeachment complaints against the vice president, if any... can only be commenced in accordance with this Decision no earlier than 6 February 2026.”

Based on the ruling, after the filing of the first three impeachment complaints, the House “did not act on them nor refer them to the Speaker of the House until 5 February, when Secretary General Reginald Velasco transmitted them to Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez.

“Under Article XI, Section 3(2) of the Constitution, the verified complaint for impeachment should be included in the Order of Business within 10 session days from receipt and immediately referred to the House Committee on Justice within three session days.”

On the same day, the members of the House were reportedly summoned to the Romualdez Hall for a “caucus,” allegedly without being informed of its purpose or agenda.

“During said caucus, members of the House filed another impeachment complaint against Vice President Duterte.”

The fourth impeachment complaint was signed by a total of 215 out of 306 members of the House of Representatives.

“At 4:47 p.m. on 5 February 2025, House Secretary Velasco transmitted the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate even without a plenary vote. However, no formal action was taken by the Senate.”

The one-year bar was triggered due to the ill-advised maneuver to introduce a fourth complaint that had the House imprimatur.

The House declared the first three complaints as “archived,” which, according to the Tribunal, “For constitutional purposes, the first three complaints were effectively dismissed.”

There was no substitution through the fourth complaint, which was prepared independently of the earlier endorsed complaints.

“It is therefore a separate and distinct action to initiate an impeachment process. Therefore, the fourth impeachment complaint and the Articles of Impeachment from it are barred.”

It would be pointless to expect the Supreme Court to overturn its decision, given two clear points the House must ingest: The vote was unanimous, and the ruling was unequivocal about the one-year bar that the House breached.

The legislators in the large chamber must move on instead of engaging in a ritual akin to flogging a dead horse.