Sara agrees with poll: She should be tried
Vice President Sara Duterte said she agreed with an overwhelming majority of Filipinos that she should be tried by an impeachment court for corruption and other high crimes, but she has not withdrawn her petition in the Supreme Court questioning her impeachment.
“Oh, I totally agree,” she said of the results of a recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) poll that she should be tried by the Senate after she was impeached by the House of Representatives on Feb. 5.
“I’m among those 88 percent who say that,” she told reporters and supporters on Friday outside the International Criminal Court detention center in The Hague, the Netherlands, where her father, ex-President Rodrigo Duterte, is being held.
Her office provided the media in the Philippines with a copy of the video interview with her.
“I’m thankful for the opportunity to clear my name and answer the accusations against me,” Duterte said.
The impeachment complaint accuses her of culpable violation of the Constitution, bribery, graft and corruption, and betrayal of public trust for, among others, her alleged misuse of more than P612 million in confidential funds and for her alleged threat to assassinate President Marcos, first lady Liza Araneta Marcos and Speaker Martin Romualdez.
She spoke in The Hague on May 30, on the eve of her 47th birthday, which she planned to celebrate with her father and their supporters.
The former president is accused of murder as a crime against humanity for the thousands killed in his brutal antinarcotics campaign that he implemented as mayor of Davao City and later as president.
The May 2025 SWS survey on “people’s post-election expectations” released on Thursday, showed that 68 percent of the 1,800 respondents nationwide said that the Vice President “definitely should address the impeachment charges, answer all allegations pertaining to corruption and clear her name.” It showed that 20 percent said that she “probably should” do the same.
Delay downplayed
Only 4 percent said that Duterte “probably should not” and 3 percent said she “definitely should not,” results of the survey showed. Four percent were unsure what to say.
The poll also saw a consensus that Duterte should focus more on her work as Vice President and minimize any politically driven activities.
Asked to comment on the deferment of the start of the impeachment trial to June 11 instead of June 2, when the Congress resumes session, Duterte said she saw no impact of the delay on her case, but would leave it to her lawyers to study the developments further.
Also in the Netherlands was Sen. Imee Marcos, the eldest sister of President Marcos.
Duterte had a bitter falling out with Mr. Marcos, unraveling their formidable UniTeam that swept the 2022 national elections.
Marcos said on his inaugural BBM Podcast that he was willing to reconcile with the Dutertes because he needed more friends than enemies.
“I probably won’t talk about reconciliation because people’s personal problems aren’t important. What’s more important is our people and our country,” Duterte said in response to his remarks.
She said the President’s sister, whose reelection she supported in the recent midterm polls, was in The Hague to speak with her father’s lawyer, Nicholas Kaufman.
“Whatever it is they talked about, I have nothing to do with it anymore,” she said.
The Vice President and her mother, Elizabeth Zimmerman Duterte, were able to see her father for a “prebirthday” celebration. A “send Duterte home” rally is scheduled to take place outside the detention center on her birthday on Saturday.
She earlier said she was eager to see the trial through because she wanted a “bloodbath.” She did not elaborate on what she meant.
Supreme Court challenge
While Duterte committed to face the charges against her in the impeachment court, she did not say anything about the petition she filed on Feb. 18 in the Supreme Court questioning the constitutionality of the impeachment process.
Duterte accused the House of Representatives and its secretary general, Reginald Velasco, of withholding the first three complaints against her allegedly to circumvent the one-year ban on the filing of more than one complaint against an impeachable official.
She said that the House only acted on the fourth complaint, which was signed by 215 of around 300 members of the chamber. The fourth petition, however, contained essentially the same charges against her in the three others.
“This political stratagem was done at the expense of constitutional standards … with the ultimate goal of having the petitioner perpetually disqualified from running for any national elective office,” she said in her petition.
Duterte is a probable contender in the May 2028 presidential election.
Another petition was filed just hours after her own petition by several of her supporters. They asked the Supreme Court to stop the Senate from convening into an impeachment court.
Senior Deputy Speaker Aurelio Gonzales Jr. said then that Duterte and the other petitioners were “running scared … perhaps the allegations of corruption are true.”
Deputy Speaker David Suarez of Quezon said Duterte’s move “reeks of panic and a blatant effort to undermine the impeachment process even before it formally begins.”
‘Calculated scheme’
ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro criticized Duterte for flying to the Netherlands to celebrate “with more lies and political theatrics” instead of reflecting on her actions ahead of her impeachment trial.
“The Filipino people deserve transparency, not squid tactics,” Castro said.
“On her birthday, we challenge VP Duterte to choose truth over deception, accountability over evasion. The impeachment process is constitutional and legitimate—she should respect it instead of undermining it with her desperate antics,” the lawmaker said.
Other ACT leaders slammed the fresh delay in the start of the impeachment trial, which they called a “calculated scheme” to quash the proceedings altogether.
ACT Representative-elect Antonio Tinio said the delay signals an attempt to “kill the impeachment trial through procedural maneuvering rather than addressing the serious charges on their merits.”
He said that the “delaying tactics make a mockery of our democratic institutions and constitutional processes.”
“If impeachment proceedings can be killed through procedural technicalities and political alignments, then no high official will ever be held accountable for corruption and abuse of power,” Tinio said.
He was particularly concerned about how the delay strategy “was seemingly being orchestrated across party lines,” noting that Mr. Marcos himself again publicly expressed his opposition to the trial. —WITH A REPORT FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH
