“Ang impeachment complaint po ay parang sinaing na niluto ng House of Representatives. Hilaw po eh, hilaw na hilaw,” said Marcoleta, the Deputy Senate Majority Leader. (The impeachment complaint is like rice that was cooked by the House. It was undercooked, completely undercooked.)
Marcoleta reminded his fellow senators that the Supreme Court, as the final arbiter of the law, had spoken.
“Mr. President, when the Supreme Court negates the actions of a co-equal branch of government, it does not assert its superiority. Instead, it upholds the supremacy and the dominance of the fundamental law of the land—the Constitution,” he said.
He emphasized that the high court’s decision was “immediately executory” and found the House complaint to be “violative of due process.”
“Mr. President, the Supreme Court has already spoken. The last arbiter of law says the complaint is unconstitutional, is void ab initio, is violative of due process,” he said. “The Senate never acquired jurisdiction over this. It is immediately executory.”
Marcoleta said the Supreme Court didn’t touch the substance of the complaint against Duterte.
Rather, the Court struck it down purely on procedural grounds—mainly the House’s failure to follow its own impeachment rules and its violation of the constitutional one-year bar on multiple complaints.
“The rules are clear. No impeachment proceedings shall be initiated against the same official more than once within a year. Yet, four complaints were filed between December 2024 and February 2025,” Marcoleta said, accusing the House of “failing to comply even with the most basic requirements.”
House missteps
Marcoleta detailed several “procedural lapses” committed by the House, including its failure to promptly refer the first three complaints to the Speaker, and referring all four complaints only on 5 February, more than two months after the first complaint was filed.
He also cited a misrepresentation in the House’s order of business, saying the complaints were only listed as “additional reference of business” in the journal, and not formally calendared. He also flagged a serious technical flaw: the verification submitted with the complaint lacked the required sworn affidavit, effectively leaving the document unsigned.
“It just had to be copied, and yet it still wasn’t copied properly,” he noted.
“This is an impeachment complaint. You are removing the second-highest official of the government. Even just the verification was already a failure,” he said.
Marcoleta further argued that the complaint became moot when the 19th Congress ended at noon on 30 June 2025, and the Senate had taken no action to adopt or revive the case in the 20th Congress.
“There has been no action, no resolution, no motion to carry over the case into the 20th Congress,” he pointed out.
Respect for the courts
Citing a statement from the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), Marcoleta warned of the dangers of ignoring judicial rulings.
“If every adverse ruling becomes an invitation to disobey,” he quoted, “the law ceases to be a constraint on power and becomes its casualty.”
Invoking the finality and authority of the Supreme Court, he moved for the outright dismissal of the impeachment complaint.
“And on that note, Mr. President, I respectfully move that the impeachment complaint be dismissed,” he said.
‘Why are we rushing?’
But Minority Leader Vicente “Tito” Sotto III objected, urging the chamber to wait until the Supreme Court rules on the House’s motion for reconsideration.
“The decision is not yet final. A Motion for Reconsideration was filed by the House of Representatives just last Monday,” Sotto said. “Why are we rushing to dismiss the case?”
He said the Court could still reverse itself — as it had done in landmark decisions in La Bugal-B’laan vs. Ramos and Lily Lopez vs. Lolito Lopez.
Sotto also took issue with the Court’s timeline, pointing out that the 19th Congress didn’t end on 5 February, as the ruling implied, but on 14 June, with the last session day on 11 June.
“There is a world of difference between adjournment versus a sine die adjournment,” he said.
He called the ruling “transcendental” in terms of its constitutional implications and criticized the Court for issuing a decision without holding oral arguments or even consulting Congress on legislative procedures.
Sotto also pushed back on the ruling’s interpretation of how impeachment proceedings are initiated, warning that it could limit future impeachment options.
“If the Supreme Court is now changing the meaning of ‘initiating,’ then at the very least it should be applied prospectively,” he said.
He also slammed the quality of the ruling itself, calling it “incoherent,” with some parts “off topic” and seemingly patched together.
“It’s like it was just stitched together,” he said, citing the repeated quoting of Article XI of the Constitution as an example of its editorial sloppiness.
Still, Sotto stopped short of open defiance and appealed for judicial reconsideration.
“Please, let us allow and give a chance to the Supreme Court to rectify its decision, which contains clear and blatant errors — for their sake and for the sake of future proceedings,” he said.
“Let us not dismiss forthwith,” he urged.
Hontiveros: Not defiance
Senator Risa Hontiveros echoed Sotto, saying it would be premature for the Senate to act while the Supreme Court ruling had yet to attain finality.
