Public opinion’s pull
Senator-judges do not live in splendid isolation. They campaign, cultivate constituencies, and know that every question, ruling and vote will be scrutinized long after the trial ends.
Text size
Senator-judges do not live in splendid isolation. They campaign, cultivate constituencies, and know that every question, ruling and vote will be scrutinized long after the trial ends.
The Senate impeachment court trying Vice President Sara Duterte has developed a predictable rhythm.
Long before Chiz Escudero, the officious-sounding presiding officer, gavels the proceedings to order, prosecutors and defense lawyers are already before the cameras, previewing witnesses, explaining legal theories and framing the day’s expected testimony.
Once the hearing adjourns, they are back before the microphones, declaring victories, explaining away setbacks and telling Filipinos what they were supposed to have seen.
Somewhere in between lies the actual trial.
The hearings themselves have become the filling in a political sandwich, squeezed between two carefully orchestrated efforts to sell competing narratives to the same audience: The Filipino public and the senator-judges who, unlike career magistrates, are politicians first and judges only for the duration of this extraordinary constitutional exercise.
Monday’s Day 4 hearing shows how the pattern plays out in practice.
Before the session, House prosecutors portrayed Office of the Vice President chief of staff Zuleika Lopez as a crucial witness because she was present when Duterte allegedly threatened President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and then Speaker Martin Romualdez.
Even before Lopez takes the stand today, viewers have already been told what her testimony would mean before hearing a word of it.
Likewise, the defense, through its spokesperson Michael Poa, moved to defuse another headline, explaining that Duterte’s “bloodbath” remark referred only to the ordeal she expected from the proceedings themselves.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, insisted they were focused on evidence rather than counting the votes for conviction. Each statement carried legal weight, but each also did a second job: Shaping public perception.
Every hearing now comes with a pregame show and a postgame analysis. No one should be surprised.
Impeachment is a process the Constitution deliberately entrusted to elected officials, not insulated judges. Senator-judges do not live in splendid isolation. They campaign, cultivate constituencies, and know that every question, ruling and vote will be scrutinized long after the trial ends.
That is why neither camp lets the evidence speak for itself. “Key witness.” “Bloodbath.” “Hostile witness.” “Not counting votes.” These phrases dominate the headlines and social media before the public has had a chance to digest the evidence behind them. The narrative races ahead; the record struggles to keep pace.
There is nothing improper, in itself, about lawyers defending clients or prosecutors advocating outside the courtroom, so long as they respect the proceedings’ integrity. But the intensity of the messaging gives away the game: Senator-judges, however impartial their oath demands, cannot fully insulate themselves from the pull of public opinion.
Perhaps that is impeachment’s unavoidable paradox. The Constitution wrote a legal proceeding to be judged on evidence and argued on principle. Politics rewrote it as a communications campaign, judged on optics and argued on air.
In this impeachment, the trial never really ends. It merely pauses until the next press conference.
