Sara impeach trial to proceed on 6 July – lead prosecutor

With the pre-trial stage for the impeachment process of Vice President Sara Duterte well underway, a member of the House prosecution confirmed that the trial on the matter was going to begin on 6 July.

A day after concluding their first day of the pre-trial conference, House Lead Public Prosecutor Gerville Luistro stated that she was anticipating that this time around, the impeachment was going to push through as mandated under the constitution.

“We would like to commend the impeachment court, the prosecution team and even the defense team for taking a stance towards expeditious proceedings towards this pre-trial so we can start on July 6 because after, the public has long waited for this,” Luistro said.

To recall, during Duterte’s first impeachment under the 19th congress, the impeachment articles that were filed against her were returned to the House of Representatives and subsequently deemed unconstitutional through a Supreme Court ruling.

The two main arguments that were cited in the high-court’s resolution were that the complaints had violated the one-year bar rule and that the proceedings that were undertaken did not afford the Vice President the right to due process.

Through the 20th congress, however, in spite of the insistence from the camp of Duterte that the process was still not properly followed, the complaints were once again transmitted to the Senate which eventually convened as an impeachment court.

Currently, the impeachment is under the pre-trial stage where evidence as well as witnesses are marked and their presentation is scheduled in line with the court calendar that would be agreed upon by both parties.

After the first day of the conference, no schedule has been determined though as Luistro said that they were still in the process of marking the voluminous evidence that they had for all four articles.

“So just to update, we started the marking of exhibits yesterday and hopefully we can finish it this coming Monday because we have four articles of impeachment in our complaint,” the solon said.

“The documentary exhibits per article is different so for the two articles that have lengthy and plenty of evidence, that’s what we left for Monday,” she explained.

“All of the issues have already been submitted and all that’s left to finish is the marking of the exhibits and to wait for the release of the pre-trial order,” she added.

No prejudgment on Chiz

Despite the process seemingly proceeding “forthwith” as indicated under Article XI, Section 3 of the constitution, many onlookers became alarmed when notions were floated that Senator Chiz Escudero was going to be elected as the presiding officer of the impeachment.

The idea was first declared by Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson who claimed that there was a “consensus” that it was Escudero that was going to oversee the impeachment.

“Per our consensus as of this morning, we will elect Sen. Chiz Escudero if we convene again as an impeachment court, to be the presiding officer,” Lacson said during the Senate’s special session last Wednesday, 17 June.

“He’s a lawyer and has experience with the impeachment process,” the senator added.

For the public, experience and his legal background was far from the concern, as Escudero was the senator that served as the presiding officer during Duterte’s first impeachment that was clouded in controversies.

However, Luistro stated that regardless of the precedent that had previously been set, she affirmed they were prepared to give the long-time senator the benefit of the doubt for the current impeachment.

“We have to understand that the circumstances surrounding the first impeachment are entirely different from the circumstances surrounding the present impeachment. Let us not pre-judge Senator Chiz Escudero, if he is the one designated as a presiding officer,” she said.

“Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. We can not judge him because his position during the first impeachment was different from our interpretation of forthwith, we have yet to hear his take, as a matter of fact I have not seen an interview of Senator Chiz as to his appreciation of the present impeachment,” she added.

Under the current articles of impeachment, Duterte is being charged over allegations linked to her unexplained wealth, misuse of confidential funds, bribery of officials, and verbal threats to high-ranking public figures.

The Vice President and her camp have so far been cooperative with the process of the Senate, contrary to their stance throughout the entire proceedings undertaken by the House Committee on Justice.