SC may take up petition for ‘immediate’ Sara impeachment trial
The Supreme Court may take up during its en banc session on Feb. 18 the petition urging it to compel the Senate to “immediately” begin Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial.
“The case was raffled [on Monday] and will possibly be included in [Tuesday’s] agenda, along with other petitions,” Supreme Court spokesperson Camille Ting said on Monday.
The petitioner, lawyer Catalino Generillo Jr., asked the high tribunal to instruct the Senate to “immediately” form an impeachment court and start Duterte’s trial.
Generillo, a former special counsel of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, specifically asked the high court to issue a writ of mandamus “directing the members of the Senate to immediately constitute themselves into an impeachment court and forthwith conduct the public trial of Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte without further delay.”
“In the final analysis, the Constitution does not allow the Senate to procrastinate during the period it is in recess, whether it shall constitute itself into an impeachment court and try the Vice President,” he said.
“If it were so, the framers of the Constitution wrote a useless provision. Woe to the so-called doctrine of supremacy of the Constitution,” he added.
The impeachment complaint against the Vice President, signed by 215 lawmakers, accuses her of culpable violation of the Constitution, bribery, graft and corruption, betrayal of public trust, and other crimes.
Senate President Francis Escudero previously said there was no reason to expedite the trial while Congress was in recess.
An impeachment primer by the University of the Philippines’ College of Law points to two views on whether the Senate can proceed with the trial while in recess. One says it must wait until session resumes while the other asserts the Senate “can and should hold trial immediately.”
