An alleged impeachment case against President Marcos Jr. is unlikely to succeed in the House of Representatives due to insufficient grounds for impeachment, unlike the case of Vice President Sara Duterte, a legal expert said Monday.
Lawyer Antonio La Viña, former dean of the Ateneo School of Government, is adamant that the impeachment against the president has “no chance” of gaining traction, asserting that the “corruption” in the recent budgets was not personally committed by the president and therefore cannot constitute a betrayal of public trust.
“As a general rule, you cannot impeach an official for policy reasons, for policy disagreement,” he said in a radio interview. “A policy dispute is not a basis for impeachment.”
La Viña said Marcos’ case is entirely different from that of Duterte because the latter’s impeachment case was backed by evidence, citing the “fictitious” recipients of her P612.5 million in confidential funds and the public virtual briefing where she threatened to assassinate the first couple and former Speaker Martin Romualdez.
“Impeachment is done if the president did something personal, for example, corruption. Actually, the classic impeachment would be that of Sara Duterte, if it were to happen, [because] there are specific charges of corruption, betrayal of public trust against her,” he continued.
La Viña also noted that even if lawmakers from the minority and the so-called “Duterte bloc” support the impeachment, they would be heavily outnumbered, as Marcos commands supermajority support in the House.
Over the weekend, House Senior Deputy Minority Leader Edgar Erice confirmed to the Daily Tribune that a group supportive of Vice President Duterte would file the impeachment case against Marcos, which would be jointly endorsed by some members of the majority and independent lawmakers.
The unnamed group, he said, initially reached out to him to solicit his support in endorsing the complaint, but he declined.
Erice projected that the impeachment may be anchored on betrayal of public trust, citing Marcos’ “gross inexcusable negligence” in thoroughly vetting the three recent budgets passed under his administration, particularly the graft-ridden 2025 General Appropriations Act.
This, according to Erice, could be attributed to the purported connivance of Marcos’ allies in Congress and Cabinet members in manipulating the budgets and corruption scheme in the flood control project.
No less than Marcos himself was implicated in the allegations of kickbacks from flood control projects and budget insertions. Fugitive resigned lawmaker Elizaldy Co made damning accusations that the president and Romualdez received large sums of kickbacks from the scheme, in addition to P2 billion in monthly deliveries.
In his previous exposés, Co alleged that Marcos ordered him to insert P100 billion in the 2025 budget in his capacity as chair of the House Committee on Appropriations.
Senator Ping Lacson, however, argued that Co was only made to believe that the P100 billion was a directive from the president, citing information he obtained from former DPWH undersecretary Robernato Bernardo’s camp.
Bernardo is being considered one of the facilitators of kickbacks to lawmakers in exchange for inserting line items intended for flood control projects into annual budgets.
Lacson said then Presidential Legislative Liaison Office undersecretary Adrian Bersamin and Education undersecretary Trygve Olaivar, who both resigned after being implicated in the kickback scheme, “misrepresented” Marcos to gain leverage and convinced Co that the P100 billion in insertions was an order from the president.
In a Senate hearing last year, Bernardo said Olaivar reached out to him in 2024 to discuss allocations for unprogrammed funds allegedly for the Office of the Executive Secretary, which is under the president, for 2025.
Lacson claimed that Bernardo detailed to him how the kickback scheme operates. The senator said Bernardo himself handled the deliveries for kickbacks but never delivered one to Marcos.
Bernardo also alleged that he delivered kickbacks to Olaivar on multiple occasions and that he is convinced Bersamin was with Olaivar when the latter received P8 billion in at least 10 deliveries, according to Lacson.
La Viña underscored that the only way to impeach Marcos on the ground of betrayal of public trust is to determine whether he personally ordered the insertions and whether the kickbacks were indeed delivered to him.