Unfolding events indicate that administration allies in the House of Representatives have initiated an effort to immunize President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. from impeachment by invoking the one-year bar rule.
Under the Constitution, any citizen may file an impeachment complaint provided it is endorsed by at least one member of the House.
It would require a one-third vote out of over 300 House members to proceed to the Senate for trial. The lower chamber remains dominated by Marcos allies, making the advancement of the complaint unlikely.
The first impeachment complaint against the President — filed on 19 January 2026 by lawyer Andre de Jesus and endorsed by Pusong Pinoy party-list Rep. Jett Nisay — is evidently hollow and designed to trigger the Constitution’s one-year bar rule, thereby blocking stronger and more substantive complaints.
Article XI, Section 3(5) of the Constitution provides: “No impeachment proceedings shall be initiated against the same official more than once within a period of one year.”
That part of the Constitution, as interpreted in past cases and recent Supreme Court rulings, stipulates that once a complaint is filed, verified, and deemed “initiated,” or referred to the House justice committee and included in its order of business, new complaints may not be filed for a year, even if the first complaint was quickly dismissed for insufficiency.
Second and third complaints from progressive groups and former officials will then face acceptance issues and be junked due to the Charter’s limitation.
The tactic of filing a weak or “sacrifice” complaint to preempt a stronger one has a historical precedent — the “Oliver Lozano strategy,” named after the lawyer who used to file multiple weak complaints to invoke the one-year bar.
The maneuver, however, is only effective for Marcos, since the House remains dominated by his allies, making the quick dismissal of a weak complaint likely and activating the one-year bar. Not so for Vice President Sara Duterte.
The possibility of Supreme Court intervention arises from its 25 July 2025 ruling in the case against Vice President Duterte, which declared her impeachment unconstitutional and underscored the Court’s power of judicial oversight.
While the decision focused on Duterte’s case, particularly its “fast-tracking,” where one-third of House members directly endorsed the impeachment articles, it has broader implications for all impeachment modes.
These changes emphasize due process, standards of evidence, and judicial oversight, thereby making impeachment proceedings more rigorous.
Delays in accepting subsequent impeachment filings could be challenged as procedural violations, potentially inviting Supreme Court review, given that legal issues in impeachment proceedings are now subject to judicial scrutiny.
A counter-argument, however, is that such intervention would constitute a judicial overreach and a breach of the separation of powers.
The 20th Congress has yet to adopt impeachment rules to align with the SC decision.
With a substantial House majority of over 250 allies, the dismissal of a complaint is likely, but the SC ruling makes the process more transparent and contestable.
The twin impeachments against Marcos and Duterte would present an interesting contrast in the process of removing the two highest officials and the long-held principle that the procedure is more political than legal.
The public, however, will not look kindly on a situation where one official is let off the hook, while the other is brought to trial owing to the tyranny of numbers.