Time to show up
Today, the 39th day of the Senate impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, marks the official start of the defense panel’s presentation of evidence. The Vice President’s entire coterie of lawyers will no doubt be present, but Duterte herself will be nowhere in sight. It would be a shock, in fact, if she suddenly showed up, having gone on record through her counsel several times that she saw no need to defend herself through personal appearance.
“Choosing to appear through counsel rather than testify personally does not diminish accountability or imply a lack of transparency. The integrity of an impeachment trial depends on adherence to the rule of law—not on whether the respondent personally takes the stand,” she said at the start of the trial on July 6.
Before the Senate trial got underway, Duterte had reflexively deflected any demand for accountability and clarification by saying she would address accusations in the “proper forum.” That was the mantra her camp invoked on a number of occasions: in August 2025, for instance, when Duterte said she would “explain in the proper forum” the allegations regarding the misuse of confidential funds after the Supreme Court nullified previous impeachment complaints against her; and in March 2026, when her legal counsel, Michael Poa, stated at a press conference that Duterte was ready to answer the impeachment complaints against her in a “proper forum” following her absence from the House Committee on Justice’s impeachment hearing.
Highest platform
In September 2026, her camp also claimed she had evidence concerning specific security threats against her and her family that she was prepared to present “in the proper forum.”
Is there a more proper forum where the VP can explain herself and officially push back at the charges against her than the Senate impeachment trial? Impeachment is a constitutionally mandated process, and the only lawfully sanctioned mechanism for the removal of the nation’s second-highest official.
Duterte is being afforded the highest platform—at considerable taxpayer expense—by which she can account for her actions in full and lay out all the evidence she has at her disposal to disprove the grave allegations against her.
Her lawyers may even be doing a superior job of presenting her case, if a recent survey is to be believed. According to a Social Weather Stations (SWS) poll conducted nationwide from Sept. 21 to Sept. 27, more Filipinos—47 percent—were satisfied with the VP’s defense team than with the House prosecution, which was favored by only 30 percent of respondents.
Major media mileage
Those numbers were of course the ones that got major media mileage, and the VP’s camp likely rejoiced at the good news the survey results brought them. But somewhere else in the survey was another set of figures that Duterte and her minders should bother to check: The same SWS poll also showed that 78 percent of the respondents said it was important for the VP to testify personally in her trial.
That sentiment is not an outlier. It closely tracks the findings in similar surveys—that whatever one may think about the guilt or innocence of Duterte, a clear majority of Filipinos believe it is important for her to respect the process and take accountability by personally attending the trial.
A Pulse Asia survey held Sept. 17 to 24 showed that 51 percent of Filipino adults believe she should personally testify, while a Tangere survey in May found that 90 percent of respondents wanted Duterte to appear before the Senate, and 82 percent said she should personally attend the proceedings instead of relying solely on legal representation. The Tangere survey also revealed that support for Duterte’s personal appearance cut across political affiliations, and that only 8 percent believed the appearance of her lawyers would suffice.
Huge disparity
The message is unmistakable: The allegations against the VP are of such serious import that many Filipinos of whatever stripe are earnestly waiting to hear directly from her—to listen to her expound, for example, on the circumstances and rationale behind the decision to release millions in confidential funds that eventually vanished, since every single witness in that case had pointed to her as the final deciding officer.
Now Duterte doesn’t even have to testify on that issue, since the impeachment article on her alleged misuse of public funds has been withdrawn by the prosecution. The only thing she has to shed light on at this point is the huge disparity between her declared wealth and the assets discovered in her bank and business accounts—admittedly a daunting hurdle given the devastating testimony by financial forensic expert Alexander Cabrera.
But if everything is aboveboard and has a perfectly rational explanation, what’s stopping Duterte from speaking for herself? As her formal defense starts today, the VP should heed public sentiment and make the effort to, at last, show up. Anything less would be a lasting shame.
