Sara runs again to SC; alleged ‘bagman’ can testify at House
Vice President Sara Duterte has again asked the Supreme Court to immediately stop the impeachment proceedings against her and nullify the new set of complaints initiated at the House of Representatives.
In the 55-page petition filed on April 1 and made public on Wednesday, Duterte raised, among others, two procedural issues: That only the office of the Speaker, not the chamber as a body, referred the complaints to the House committee on justice; and that two of the four separate complaints filed against her violated the one-year bar rule but were still declared by the committee as “sufficient” in form, substance, and grounds.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the concerned House leaders to comment on the petition within 10 days from receipt of the notice.
The court also consolidated the petitions filed last week by a group of pro-Duterte lawyers led by Israelito Torreon, which sought to block the impeachment proceedings for allegedly being unconstitutional.
Unless the temporary restraining order sought by Duterte is granted by the court, the next committee hearing on the complaints will be on April 14.
Duterte’s move marked the second time she turned to the Supreme Court for relief. She succeeded in the first: The Supreme Court in July 2025 junked the articles of impeachment against her that the House overwhelmingly endorsed, preventing her Senate trial.
In her latest petition, Duterte contended that the referral of the latest complaints to the House committee was already “unconstitutional.” She cited the Feb. 23 referral letter sent by House Deputy Secretary General David Amorin to the committee chair, Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro.
The letter, she said, indicated that the four impeachment complaints were referred only by Speaker Faustino “Bojie” Dy III—not by the chamber as a collective body.
Gutierrez case
Duterte said this was in “patent disregard” of the Supreme Court’s earlier decisions affirming that referrals of impeachment complaints must be done by the House as a whole and not by the Speaker or a committee.
“In Gutierrez, this Honorable Court made clear that the act of referral of an impeachment complaint is not a mechanical act and circumspect deliberations by the (House) before any such referral is indispensable in order that it does not become instrumental in perpetrating a constitutionally prohibited second impeachment proceeding,” Duterte’s petition read, referring to the Supreme Court’s 2011 decision on the impeachment against then Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez.
The Vice President was specifically challenging two—of the original four—impeachment complaints that were declared by the committee as sufficient in form, substance and grounds. The number was reduced to two after the panel set aside the earliest complaint filed by the Makabayan bloc led by former Rep. France Castro, while another complaint was withdrawn by Tindig Pilipinas convener Kiko Aquino Dee.
Only the third complaint filed on Feb. 9 by a group of clergymen, civil society leaders and lawyers, and the fourth one filed on Feb. 28 by lawyer Nathaniel Cabrera, were left for the House to “initiate” since their filing was already past the one-year ban.
According to Duterte, the third and fourth complaints—the ones now being tackled by the House committee—should also be declared “void ab initio” (void from the beginning) for violating the one-year bar rule because they were acted upon after the House panel had already initiated the first two complaints.
“Under these circumstances then, the withdrawal and setting aside of the Dee (second) and Castro (first) complaints, respectively, operate as their effective dismissal and/or termination of at least two impeachment proceedings, which bars any further impeachment proceedings on the remaining… complaints,” the Vice President said.
Madriaga OK’d to appear
Also on Wednesday, the House justice committee succeeded in securing court approval for the attendance of Ramil Madriaga, a former Duterte aide, in the next hearing.
According to Bicol Saro party list Rep. Terry Ridon, Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 21 allowed Madriaga, who is currently on trial for kidnapping, to be escorted from detention in Taguig City and appear before the panel on April 14.
Madriaga had executed an affidavit claiming he had acted as the Vice President’s “bagman” and delivered large sums of money in dufflebags to various parties on Duterte’s orders.
He asked the Ombudsman to investigate Duterte for alleged corruption, mainly for misusing her confidential funds. His allegation was later cited by one of the impeachment complaints.
‘Mini-trial’
Named as respondents in Duterte’s April 1 petition were the 14 private individuals behind the original four impeachment complaints, Dy, Luistro and Senate President Vicente Sotto III.
Duterte also took issue with Luistro for earlier describing the House proceedings as a “mini-trial.” The term then riled her defense lawyers, who said only the Senate can conduct an impeachment trial.
The Vice President also objected to the House subpoenas that asked various agencies—the Office of the Ombudsman, the National Bureau of Investigation, the Commission on Audit, the Department of Education, and the Philippine Statistics Authority—to submit documents that supposedly would help build up the evidence against her.
“The unconstitutionality of the proceedings conducted by the respondent committee on justice is plain on their face,” she said.
“The totality of circumstances reveals a glaring grave abuse of the entire impeachment process that shows a pre-ordained effort to set the stage for what it describes as a ‘mini-trial’ and embark on a fishing expedition to salvage otherwise deficient impeachment complaints,” she added.
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