Hearing begins on Marcos impeachment complaints
The outcome of the two impeachment complaints pending against President Marcos in the House of Representatives will ultimately depend on the evidence against him and the “conscience” of lawmakers, Bicol Saro party list Rep. Terry Ridon said on Sunday.
The House committee on justice will hold on Monday its first hearing on the separate complaints filed last month by lawyer Andre de Jesus and the Makabayan coalition. These are the first to be filed against the President since he took office in 2022.
“The entire committee is ready to hear the two questions—sufficiency in form and sufficiency in substance—of the two impeachment complaints that were filed against President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ R. Marcos Jr.,” said Ridon, chair of the House public accounts committee.
He stressed that any view or position coming from outside the chamber will have no bearing on the decision of lawmakers, since impeachment is the “sole prerogative of the legislature” with constitutional standards still the guiding framework.
Charges under scrutiny
“Impeachment proceedings will always be based on facts; it will be based on evidence and decisions relating to the impeachment will be based on the conscience of every House member,” he said.
“Because in any impeachment proceedings, what will ultimately be discussed is what is the basis. Is it culpable violation of the Constitution? Betrayal of public trust?” Ridon added.
According to him, complainants will be given the opportunity to present the bases of their accusations once hearings begin.
But touching on the substance of the allegations, Ridon pointed to portions of the complaints that, in his view, fall short of the constitutional grounds required for impeachment.
He referred in particular to the President’s alleged enabling of the “kidnapping and surrender of former President Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court (ICC)” as cited by De Jesus.
“What the executive did was to implement a treaty between the Philippines and Interpol. I think there was no impeachable offense in this situation. It does not rise to a culpable violation of the Constitution… [or] a betrayal of public trust,” Ridon said.
As for Mr. Marcos’ alleged failure to veto unprogrammed appropriations in the proposed national budgets from 2023 to 2026, Ridon said this has been the practice since 1989.
“I don’t think the Supreme Court has ever stated that this is an unconstitutional provision in the national budget,” he noted.
Consolidation of complaints
House justice committee chair and Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro earlier said that before the panel can start its deliberations on Monday, the impeachment complaints must first be consolidated “because two complaints are not possible to be heard in the justice committee.”
“So we will be doing that during our initial hearing,” she said.
Other grounds cited by De Jesus in his Jan. 19 impeachment complaint were the President’s alleged drug addiction; his creation of the Independent Commission for Infrastructure to allegedly shield corrupt allies; and his alleged violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust for surrendering Duterte to the ICC.
On the other hand, the Makabayan impeachment complaint filed on Jan. 26 focused on the “BBM Parametric Formula”—a Department of Public Works and Highways policy that stands for “Baselined-Balanced-Managed.”
According to Makabayan, the BBM Parametric Formula “provided the justification for presidential and congressional infrastructure project allocations in the national budget” that was supposedly the “basis for kickbacks or commitments.”
The group’s complaint also cited claims by resigned lawmaker and fugitive Elizaldy Co that Mr. Marcos and other Cabinet officials received kickbacks from anomalous government projects.
New case vs Duterte?
A fresh impeachment case against Vice President Sara Duterte is also expected as the one-year ban on filing a complaint against her will lapse on Feb. 6.
Ridon said the impeachment complaint that was archived by the Senate in August last year may be refiled “as is” since the Supreme Court ruling did not touch on the substance of the case against Duterte.
“It can be filed as is since there was no debate in form, there was no debate in substance,” he said, adding that the facts cited in the earlier complaint remain unchanged.
“So in a refiling of the Vice President impeachment case, I don’t think the facts have changed from last year. We’re still going to be talking about the use of confidential funds and death threats against the President, the first lady and the former House Speaker,” Ridon said.
In a ruling in July 2025, the high tribunal said the impeachment complaint against Duterte was unconstitutional for violating the one-year bar on the filing of more than one complaint against an impeachable official.
Sen. JV Ejercito, meanwhile, warned on Sunday that a simultaneous impeachment complaint against the country’s two highest government officials could signal political instability to the international community.
“Imagine if the impeachment complaints against the President and the Vice President proceed, the signal it could give to the international community… it will leave a vacuum and [create] political instability,” he said in a radio interview on dzBB.
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