Stacked Deck

Many who have bravely followed the increasingly uneventful impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte overlook the maneuvers designed to corner the defense and make a conviction easier to secure.

It begins with the power to seek reconsideration resting solely with the senator-judges, leaving the defense with little recourse against rulings it considers adverse.

The sub judice rule, which restricts public discussion of matters pending before a tribunal, has further narrowed Duterte’s lawyers’ options, limiting their ability to respond publicly to developments in the trial.

On 13 October, on the 39th day of trial, the Senate impeachment court accepted the prosecution’s withdrawal of the complaints under Article I (misuse of confidential funds), Article III (bribery), and Article IV (assassination plot, grave threats and inciting to sedition against the President).

Only Article II remained, covering unexplained wealth, including the alleged failure to disclose assets in VP Duterte’s Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) and the non-divestment of business interests despite a constitutional prohibition. The prosecution placed her questionable assets at at least P817 million.

A gag order issued by the Regional Trial Court of Quezon City in the grave threats case, which extended to the respondent, her lawyers, and her spokesperson, restricted the defense from publicly addressing the allegations leveled against VP Duterte before the House prosecutors decided to retreat.

The Senate presiding officer suggested VP Duterte could address the allegations in other public fora, but the gag order made that impossible.

Yet, because the prosecution and her other critics are not parties to the criminal case, they can discuss it, creating a bias in which one side may speak while the other, bound by judicial command, must remain silent.

The suggestion that the respondent might air her side in a press conference, advanced as a substitute for presenting evidence at trial, fails to withstand scrutiny because a trial offers what a podium cannot: witnesses whose testimony may be challenged, documents whose reliability may be probed, and an adversary entitled to cross-examine.

The defense also disputed the prosecution’s claim that its unexplained wealth case was strong enough to justify withdrawing the other articles.

The defense said the anti-money laundering records, for example, were unreliable because the reported total shrank from P6.7 billion to P4.4 billion due to a bank’s system error that converted a P2 million transaction into P2 billion.

The defense indicated it will prove the irrelevance of the bank revelations because it tallied gross inflows and outflows rather than the year-end balances that a SALN must reflect and, moreover, a considerable portion of those transactions involved a joint account that the respondent said she knew nothing about.

Her position was supported by the absence of her signature on the transactions, which would explain why the account did not appear in her SALN.

The forensic analyst’s computation of more than P800 million in undeclared wealth also drew criticism, as it allegedly rested on the assumption that the respondent owned a 20-percent stake in a certain corporation, a premise the defense disputed as false.

But the central grievance is that both sides are denied an opportunity to be heard. If the articles are withdrawn after the prosecution presents its evidence, and the respondent is neither allowed to rebut the allegations at trial nor free to address them elsewhere because of the gag order, the public would hear only one side of the story.

In effect, the trial would fail to guarantee the fairness its own procedures were designed to ensure.