They called Article 4 the strongest of the four. That was the pitch anyway. The one with teeth. The one that would put Vice President Sara Duterte away.

The prosecution just withdrew six witnesses and offered National Bureau of Investigation Director Melvin Matibag as the last to testify next week on the charges based on the meltdown video of the Vice President.

Matibag, however, had indicated that he would have nothing to add beyond what was already stated in the many press briefings he held to bolster the prosecution’s effort regarding what was supposed to be their centerpiece in the trial.

It does not take a law degree to see the case beginning to unravel. Issuing subpoenas to seven witnesses and ending up with only one is not a matter of streamlining the proceedings but a sign that the case may be running out of steam.

The prosecution, naturally, did not want to say that. So instead of a clean withdrawal, the Senate court got a monologue about dropping their witnesses.

Lead counsel Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro explained, at length, why each witness was being cut, wrapping the retreat in the language of strategy and constitutional duty. It is an old lawyer’s trick: If you can’t win the point, narrate the retreat so it sounds like an advance

The defense noticed. Fortun, Narvasa & Salazar Law’s point person and litigator, Sheila Sison, without ever using the word, accused the prosecution of trying to slip evidence in through the back door, testifying by manifestation rather than through a witness.

She said, in gist, if you’re withdrawing, withdraw. Don’t narrate. Don’t argue. Don’t let the walkout double as a closing argument.

The presiding officer agreed, more or less. Called it “akin to” a tender of excluded evidence, even while conceding nothing had technically been excluded yet, and told both sides to stop what is equivalent to editorializing a straight news story.

The exercise, announcing the pullback with a eulogy, was designed to let the prosecution reinforce its narrative one last time before closing the door, immune from cross-examination because there was no witness left to cross.

A senator-judge issued a reminder that a lawyer’s job in the proceedings is to elicit testimony, not deliver it; that describing a witness as “crying and complaining” on the stand is something a witness says, not something a lawyer does on a witness’s behalf.

The prosecution will say withdrawing witnesses is normal trial management, a matter of narrowing focus, not strength. Maybe. Trials get trimmed, but it usually happens because the remaining evidence is enough.

Here, it looks more like the remaining evidence is the breadcrumbs of what little was offered.

Impeachment is a constitutional process, not a courtroom drama. While the Rules of Court do not bind it in the same way as an ordinary criminal trial, it remains subject to constitutional standards of due process and accountability.

The public does not need a legal treatise to recognize when a case appears to be losing momentum.

When what has been portrayed as the prosecution’s strongest article reaches its final stage with only a handful of witnesses, some of whose credibility has been challenged, questions about the strength of the evidence are inevitable.

With Article 4 down to its last witness, the prosecution appears to be spending more time explaining its retreat than advancing its case, inviting criticism that the presentation has been marked by poor preparation rather than persuasive proof.

It’s a lesson on the futility of sloppy operations.