Prosecution by relocation

Call it the Manila Shuffle: present the evidence, pull the charges, and take the show on the road.

House prosecutors in Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial put witnesses on the stand for two of three articles, then abandoned all three: confidential funds, bribery and threats. Unexplained wealth is the lone act left.

Representative Joel Chua says the rest can go to the Office of the Ombudsman. A sequel, before the first film has even finished its run. How convenient. Yet nobody explains why charges unveiled with such fanfare weren’t worth finishing.

These were not idle rumors. The confidential funds allegation involves P612.5 million of the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education in 2023 and 2024.

If the evidence was strong, the prosecutors forfeited a path to conviction. If it was weak, the public is owed the admission. Withdrawal doesn’t prove Duterte innocent and vowing to relitigate doesn’t prove her guilty.

The court ruled that no verdict will issue on the withdrawn articles and that Duterte needn’t defend against them, yet it lifted sub judice limits so the allegations could be freely aired.

Her lawyers say she has been denied a chance to rebut. Prosecutors say the evidence won’t be considered and cross-examination was ample. Both may be true. The result is accusations without adjudication, a cloud with no weather.

Nor should the Ombudsman become a rerun channel.

Impeachment decides who keeps the job; the Ombudsman decides whether criminal liability exists. Doing both isn’t improper, but a big number is not a crime. The P50-million plunder threshold does not prove plunder; every element still needs admissible evidence.

Then there’s the family drama, a dynastic soap with better ratings than any teleserye. The Marcoses and the Dutertes, once partners, now waging a war of attrition over political survival and who will occupy Malacañang in 2028, while Rodrigo Duterte faces the International Criminal Court.

None of this proves President Marcos orchestrated the impeachment, although we would not begrudge anyone thinking that. It does make motives fair game. The Marcos administration has every incentive to stop a Duterte comeback; the public should insist that incentive not pass for constitutional duty.

And now, a plot twist courtesy of the casting department. By dragging Davao City Mayor Sebastian “Baste” Duterte into the drama, those eager to stop a Sara presidency may have introduced her understudy.

His appearance has energized loyalists and Filipinos sick of the Marcos government, a reminder that a movement is not a candidate and cannot be disqualified along with one.

If Sara is convicted and barred, Baste could step into the spotlight, and he may just win. The administration may be fighting the candidate while feeding the cause.

The Senate must judge the evidence, not the electoral arithmetic. The Ombudsman must act on its own judgment. And the prosecutors must explain, beyond a promise of efficiency, why they dropped charges they once asserted were grounds for removal.

If Sara Duterte is guilty, prove it. If she is innocent, the law must protect her. What the country can’t afford is a trial that changes venues when the evidence turns inconvenient, then calls it accountability and bills the taxpayers.