Revolting political circus
Prices are up because of the global crisis, and ordinary people are feeling it regardless of what’s happening in the Senate.
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Daily TribunePrices are up because of the global crisis, and ordinary people are feeling it regardless of what’s happening in the Senate.
Political bickering has dominated the national landscape for more than two years, beginning with the collapse of the first impeachment case against Vice President Sara Duterte and continuing through to the latest proceedings which opened on 6 July.
As the political drama drags on, many Filipinos are losing patience and are demanding that the government refocus on the country’s pressing economic challenges.
The Management Association of the Philippines (MAP), whose members include many of the country’s leading business executives, said the government should shift its attention toward creating jobs, attracting investments, stabilizing food prices, and reducing the cost of doing business.
MAP also stressed that accountability should not end with exposing wrongdoing. It should produce meaningful institutional reforms that strengthen governance and restore public confidence.
“The investigations must result in convictions where appropriate, in stronger procurement systems, greater transparency and ultimately better public service,” MAP said.
Through all the political wrangling, the costs are mounting.
The impeachment trial costs an estimated P25 million a day, which could be better spent on roads and jobs creation instead, according to an independent economist.
This is technically Duterte’s second impeachment as she was first subjected to the divisive process by the House on 5 February 2025, before the SC voided the complaint, and then again on 11 May 2026.
The Supreme Court ruled on 25 July 2025 that the impeachment complaint against Duterte was unconstitutional on the due process requirements, effectively blocking any new move against her based on the one-year bar rule.
The rising fuel prices, however, are real. Prices are up because of the global crisis, and ordinary people are feeling it regardless of what’s happening in the Senate.
Every peso increase at the pump is money taken from a family’s food budget, the cost people carry home every day. Set that next to the daily cost of the trial which is obscene to someone who has to decide between gas and groceries.
It is a clash between constitutional accounting and an economic emergency — with the same limited attention and limited political capital that is stretching the limited patience of the public.
A political conflict of this scale, however necessary, is genuinely the last thing the country can afford to be consumed by while households are choking on fuel costs.
The timing is bad, the exhaustion is real, and the nation genuinely cannot afford the prolonged instability.
The Vice President asked for her day in the proper forum. She’s getting it, slowly, expensively, imperfectly and at a time when the country has very little to spare, in a process that only a small portion of the population can grasp.
That doesn’t make the trial wrong to hold. Due process isn’t optional just because the timing is inconvenient, and a Vice President facing serious allegations doesn’t lose her right to a proper hearing because gas prices went up. But it’s fair to ask whether the pace and the spectacle of it are proportionate to the moment.
A trial that drags on while consuming the public’s attention, the Senate’s calendar and no small amount of money is harder to defend, particularly for its timing.
It’s not that the trial is illegitimate, but legitimacy and efficiency are two different things.
In the pursuit of accountability, the process appears to have sacrificed much of the efficiency the public also expects from the government. Whether that trade-off is necessary or simply a consequence of how the system operates is a question worth asking.
None of this places the impeachment trial beyond criticism. It has been slow, costly and, at times, overshadowed by political theater.
The public is beginning to tire of the recurring spectacle of one camp trying to outshine the other in pursuit of the day’s most dramatic sound bite.
As the proceedings drag on, another question becomes increasingly difficult to ignore: Can the nation afford a process that many now view as exhausting, polarizing, and seemingly without end?
