“Did the Vice President commit an offense or offenses worthy of an impeachment inquiry and trial?” This is the one serious question we can’t yet have a definite and proven answer to.

Claiming it’s been definitely answered by an “archived” impeachment trial is either a blatant lie or admitting that one has a small mind feverishly masticating on hyper-partisan low politics and perversely finding it delicious.

So serious, in fact, is the above question it’s being drowned out by so much noise. But the fact remains that the Supreme Court (SC) cannot rule on it while a score of opportunistic senators, who could have ruled on it, refused to address it.

Surprisingly, President Marcos Jr., usually cautious about the Veep’s impeachment, got the true point of the question.

“Let me clarify — the Supreme Court did not examine the merits of the case,” Mr. Marcos Jr. told reporters last week.

“We have to make very, very clear to everyone that the Supreme Court decision does not have any bearing on the rightness or wrongness of the merits of the case. They (the SC) are not saying that there was no wrongdoing. Neither are they saying that there was. All they are saying is that you did not handle it properly,” he explained.

So, with the reality that the Veep is still accountable, that she can’t possibly parade openly fully clothed or naked after undergoing an impeachment, it’s difficult to accept the unfounded prognosis of hyper-partisan Duterte apparatchiks that she now has a clean run to 2028.

No matter how it’s twisted, the Veep’s political troubles aren’t over. The impeachment proceedings, momentarily in a coma, has done and will go on doing her political damage.

Bewailing too that the impeachment has been weaponized — as righteous Senators Francis Escudero, Imee Marcos, and Allan Peter Cayetano accused the House of doing -– is a form of manipulated distraction called “mystification” or the process of explaining away via superfluous issues what might otherwise be evident — the senators are hedging bets on their political futures.

At any rate, it is clear that saving the Veep from early political cardiac arrest by technically derailing a convened impeachment trial and denying the seriousness of her alleged misconduct are essentially two different issues.

Which leads us to the speculation the High Court’s decision was a “power politics” move. The decision wasn’t so much about the Veep’s political fate but more about making life easier for impeachable officials like the impeachable justices themselves.

Both political and legal observers have pounced on that suspicion, with some going so far as to accuse the High Court of committing judicial overreach and of amending the Constitution.

The basis for the suspicion is the belief the High Court retroactively “suffocated” the House with impossibly stringent “due process” rules that the House was unaccustomed to when impeaching impeachable officials.

Of course, the High Court has the sole power to “determine whether or not there has been a grave abuse of discretion on the part of any branch or instrumentality of the government,” including how the House goes about impeachment proceedings. Impeachment also requires judicial procedures.

But the High Court, critics also argue, ominously took away the only clearly political, though constitutional, impeachment power the House has: initiating an impeachment by direct resolution of at least one-third of all its members.

As it is, whenever the House uses that impeachment mode, it doesn’t need to conduct hearings or do it under the strict due process the High Court now demands.