As I write this, the House of Representatives is set to vote on 11 May on whether or not to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte and bring her to trial before the Senate sitting as an impeachment court. Under the Constitution, one-third of all House members must vote in favor of impeachment. In this case, that means 106 votes.
And for all the swagger, chest-thumping, and repeated talk of a “bloodbath,” one thing has become increasingly obvious. The Vice President and her camp are worried.
That is not hard to understand. The evidence that has emerged in the House Committee on Justice hearings has been damaging enough. Worse for her, much of it has gone substantially unanswered. Take the billions of pesos that, according to the AMLC records presented, flowed into and out of bank accounts owned by the Vice President and her spouse. That is not some minor bookkeeping issue. That is a flashing red warning sign of possible unexplained wealth.
And yet, despite the army of lawyers, spokespersons, and propagandists deployed in her defense, no clear and substantial explanation has been offered.
Then there is the public mood. Survey after survey shows that a majority of Filipinos want a Senate trial. Depending on which poll you look at, support for that ranges from 69 to 90 percent. In other words, the Vice President is not just facing pressure within Congress. She is facing a public that increasingly wants the evidence fully aired in the open.
And that may explain the obvious desperation now visible in every move her camp has made.
Before the committee hearings even began, she made an early declaration of her 2028 presidential candidacy, in what looked very much like an attempt to remind House members that she might be sitting in Malacañang in two years.
The message was hard to miss: Vote against me now and there will be political retribution later.
But the early declaration did not produce the surge her camp may have hoped for. In fact, at least two surveys showed her in close head-to-head contests with former Vice President Leni Robredo and Senator Raffy Tulfo — two people who, in contrast to her, have both publicly said they are not running.
In a similar vein, while the hearings were ongoing, her camp then ran to the Supreme Court, filing petitions to stop them. Her spouse even filed a separate case before a trial court in Quezon City. This time, however, the courts stayed out of the process, at least for the moment.
And now, with the plenary vote looming, we are seeing two more last-ditch maneuvers. One is PDP Laban’s threat to blacklist any congressman who votes for impeachment. A rather limp warning, considering the party currently has only two members in the House. The other is the rumored ongoing effort by her allies in the Senate minority to engineer a coup in the chamber’s leadership. By the time this piece comes out, we may already know if that plot has gotten anywhere.
But whether these efforts succeed or fail, they all point to the same thing — her camp is terrified of a trial.
Because, for all the bravado, every step of the way, they have tried to stop the evidence from being seen, heard, and tested before the Filipino people. They have challenged the process, attacked the venue, questioned the timing, and thrown up every procedural obstacle they could think of. What they have not done is give a straight answer to the mountain of evidence that has emerged.
Which brings us back to the simplest question of all. If the Vice President truly has nothing to hide, why is she spending so much time and energy trying to prevent the truth from coming out?