Credibility on trial

Before Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial can even begin, the Senate is facing a test it is already in danger of failing. The question of who will preside over the proceedings has exposed a majority coalition that won its leadership battle but may be squandering the moral capital that came with it.

Senator Francis Escudero’s name is being floated. He is, as a broad coalition of civil society groups put it, “perhaps the most imperfect and one of the most dangerous” choices. That is not hyperbole. It is a precise description of what his designation would mean for the public’s confidence in a trial carrying extraordinary constitutional weight.

The record is not in dispute. When the House transmitted its first impeachment articles against Duterte in February 2025, Escudero, then Senate president, refused to act forthwith. He stalled. He maneuvered. And while he did, the Supreme Court stepped in and deemed the impeachment unconstitutional under the one-year bar rule.

Whether Escudero’s delay was tactical deference or deliberate sabotage, it had its effect: the Vice President walked free without facing a single day of substantive proceedings. To now hand him the gavel for Round Two is to reward that record with authority.

The coalition led by Tindig Pilipinas that raised the alarm puts the institutional stakes plainly: “At a time when the Senate must restore public confidence in its independence and credibility, elevating Escudero to this crucial role risks achieving the opposite.” And they are right.

The Senate’s new majority ousted Senator Alan Peter Cayetano in what was framed as a corrective act, a reassertion of senatorial independence. Installing Escudero as presiding officer would undercut that narrative, replacing one compromised arrangement with another.

Escudero’s defenders point to his legal background and note, as President Marcos did, that last year’s collapse had nothing to do with the senator personally — it was the Supreme Court finding that struck down the trial.

This argument does not survive scrutiny. A Senate president who moves with deliberate speed forecloses the kind of procedural vacuum that invites judicial intervention. One who lingers creates the conditions for it. Escudero did not merely fail to prevent the trial’s collapse. His conduct made it possible.

There is also the matter of political lineage. Escudero ran in 2022 with the support of the Duterte machine, the same “UniTeam” coalition that brought both Sara and Bongbong to power.

That alliance has since fractured, but political histories do not rewrite themselves on demand. The civil society groups are correct that an impeachment trial is not merely a legal exercise. It is a constitutional and political process, and the neutrality of those who oversee it is not a procedural nicety — it is the foundation on which the trial’s legitimacy rests.

The charges against Sara Duterte are grave: P612.5 million in allegedly misused confidential funds, unexplained wealth, bribery, and her own public admission of contracting an assassin to kill President Marcos, the First Lady, and former Speaker Romualdez. A trial of this magnitude, on charges this serious, demands a presiding officer whose record inspires confidence rather than suspicion.

Senate President Gatchalian has said the plan is not final. That caveat should be treated as an opportunity, not a formality — because what is now known about Escudero makes his designation not merely imprudent but indefensible.

The Office of the Ombudsman is investigating him for alleged kickbacks in anomalous government flood-control projects. The Sandiganbayan has slapped him with a precautionary hold departure order.

Whistleblowers have linked him to major infrastructure contractors and ghost projects worth billions. A construction firm that received massive flood control contracts donated ₱P30 million to his 2022 senatorial campaign — a conflict of interest so brazen it contributed to his eventual ouster as Senate President in September 2025.

This is the man the Senate majority wants presiding over a trial centered on corruption, misuse of public funds, and betrayal of public trust. The irony would be darkly comic if the stakes were not so high.

Handing Escudero the gavel is not a tactical compromise. It is akin to an institutional confession that the Senate does not take this trial — or the public’s trust — seriously.