Fishing expedition session

Every week, another oil price hike. Every day, another jeepney or TVNS driver, or a food delivery rider, watches his income evaporate at the pump. Commuters spend hours in line just to squeeze onto a bus, a train, anything that can get them home, work, or school.

While Filipinos are bleeding from the pocket just to survive, what are we being fed? A reality show. An impeachment hearing where the hosts seem to have lost the rulebook — or worse, never bothered to read it.

There’s all this drama, all these threats of contempt, lawmakers grandstanding left and right — and yet, when you listen to someone like Attorney Ferdinand Topacio, you realize most of what they’re doing has no legal leg to stand on.

What really is the House of Representatives Committee on Justice’s job? It’s neither to be a prosecutor nor a judge. Their role is to determine sufficiency — sufficiency in form, sufficiency in substance, and sufficiency of grounds.

That’s it. It’s like when you submit an application for a loan, the bank doesn’t immediately investigate your entire life story. They first check if your paperwork is complete. If it’s not, they send it back. They don’t start calling your neighbors to dig up dirt unless the basic requirements are there.

Also, think of a traffic enforcer checking if you have a valid license and registration. They won’t strip-search you and take your car apart to see if you might commit a crime later.

But what’s happening in that impeachment hearing against Vice President Sara Z. Duterte? They’re treating a weak complaint — all allegations, as Topacio put it — as if it’s already a conviction waiting to happen.

He himself couldn’t resist taking a swipe at Batangas 2nd District Rep. Gerville Luistro, saying something like, “Kung hindi ka matalino, akala mo matalino siya; pero kung matalino ka, alam mong hindi.” (If you’re not smart, you’d think she was smart; but if you’re smart, you know she’s not).

It’s a peek into their mindset: they think they’re smarter than the rules. They think they can just bully their way through.

Then there’s this obsession with obtaining bank records and other evidence that wasn’t even in the original complaint. Like Cagayan Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, Topacio called it what it is — a fishing expedition.

And he’s absolutely right. You can’t just say “Ninakaw ni VP Sara ang P125 million (She stole the P125 million)” and then demand that the committee go hunt for proof.

As he said, “Kapag may proof ka… go on report (If you have proof, report it).” But if the complaint itself is hollow — if it lacks what the Supreme Court calls “ultimate facts” — then you don’t get to use the powers of Congress to fill in the blanks because that’s not how due process works.

Speaking of powers, let’s talk about the contempt threats. There seems to be a massive confusion in the House that they can just throw anyone in jail for not answering the way they want. Topacio laid it out clearly: contempt powers in Congress only work in aid of legislation.

Impeachment is not legislation. So threatening to cite someone in contempt for giving a weak answer is pure harassment, not legitimate oversight.

Let’s not even get into the irony of lawmakers demanding transparency from the Vice President while making side comments about her intelligence. If they want to talk about accountability, it should start with how they conduct themselves — the excessive bonuses for travel, Christmas, Easter, name it… Of course, the millions in “maletas.”

At the end of the day, what Topacio is doing is forcing everyone to go back to the basics. The Supreme Court’s 29 January 2026 decision denying the House of Representatives’ motion for reconsideration and affirming its July 2025 ruling is clear: you cannot go beyond the four corners of the complaint.

A legislative committee cannot conduct a criminal investigation. “Accusation is not synonymous with guilt,” Topacio reminded them. That line alone should have stopped all the grandstanding.

Legal jargon can get boring, but this matters. If we let them bend the rules just because they don’t like the respondent, then nobody’s safe. Today it’s the Vice President. Tomorrow it could be any of us who gets on their bad side.

So, yes, I agree with Attorney Topacio. Stop the fishing. Stick to the complaint. Follow the law. It’s not that hard — unless, of course, they’re more interested in a circus than in justice.