Another group asks SC to reverse ruling on VP impeachment
The Supreme Court (SC) was asked on Monday by a fifth group of petitioners to reconsider and overturn its July 25 ruling that declared unconstitutional the impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte, a decision that led the Senate to archive the case.
In a 75-page motion, the group of lawyers, priests, and civil society organizations behind the third impeachment complaint against Duterte in December 2024 urged the high court to allow them to intervene in the case, and for the court to dismiss the petitions challenging the articles of impeachment.
The petitioners include the Union of Peoples’ Lawyers in Mindanao; priests Joel Saballa, Antonio Labiao Jr. and Ruben Villanueva; and members of different nongovernmental organizations.
The group argued that the Supreme Court created a “legal fiction” that undermined the Constitution’s intent when it ruled that the House’s inaction on the first three complaints amounted to the initiation of impeachment proceedings.
This, they said, shifted the purpose of impeachment from being a tool to protect the State “to one that first protects the public official.”
“The message of the third set of complainants is simple: The Constitution is supposed to protect the State from the highest public officials like the Vice President. It should not be the other way around,” lawyer Amando Ligutan, counsel for the group, told reporters in an interview after the filing.
The group also criticized the Supreme Court’s reasoning that impeachment must be tempered due to its serious reputational and professional consequences.
“With all due respect, by protecting the reputation of impeachable officers, the Honorable Court may have significantly weakened the constitutional mechanism of impeachment,” they warned.
The House filed its own motion for reconsideration on Aug. 4. The first three sets of impeachment complainants, including the group that filed on Monday, have separately sought a reversal of the SC’s ruling.
Though not part of the groups that filed the impeachment complaints at the House, the 1Sambayan Coalition led by retired Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio and former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales also filed a motion to intervene and urged the high court on Aug. 5 to hold oral arguments on the case.
Commitment
Meanwhile, the Makabayan bloc in the House of Representatives has committed to refiling an impeachment complaint against Vice President Duterte by February 2026 in case the high court does not overturn its decision.
In an interview with reporters on Monday, ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio and Kabataan Rep. Renee Co both said they would file a new complaint should the high court refuse to heed the House’s motion for reconsideration.
“The public deserves to know where their money is at. And if [Duterte] will continuously evade and say ‘I don’t want to appear because there are questions or it is not voluntary for me to explain’ […] for us these are acts unbecoming of a public official,” said Co, a lawyer.
“So in the end, whether it be through an impeachment trial in 2026 or continuous scrutiny through the hearings in Congress where we want the corruption issues to be revealed, the Makabayan bloc will continue to do that,” she added.
In the 19th Congress, when ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro, Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas and Kabataan Rep. Raoul Manuel were in office, Makabayan endorsed the second impeachment complaint against Duterte, filed on Dec. 4, 2024.
Escudero vs Sotto
On X (formerly Twitter), Senate President Francis Escudero and Senate Minority Leader Vicente Sotto III traded barbs over Sotto’s expression of support for amending the Constitution in light of the SC ruling on the impeachment case.
Escudero called out Sotto and accused him of backing an alleged new push for Charter change led by the House of Representatives.
Sought for comment, Sotto explained in a text message on Monday: “What I said was, if the SC ruling stands as is and the Constitution is amended by merely [an] SC decision, then I will consider supporting a Constituent Assembly or a Constitutional Convention to rewrite Article XI of the Constitution because the requirements written in the SC decision [are] impossible to meet.”
“I am not siding with anybody, unlike them. I am all for the Constitution,” Sotto added.
Minority Senators Sotto, Bam Aquino, Risa Hontiveros and Kiko Pangilinan on Aug. 6 voted against archiving the impeachment case of Duterte, while Sen. Panfilo Lacson abstained.
