Impeachment testimony: Taking the case to the people’s court

The route taken by former Sen. Antonio Trillanes to make the case against Vice President Sara Duterte in a press conference rather than before the impeachment court demonstrates strategic acumen and an insightful masterstroke. It exhibits the erstwhile rebel leader’s awareness of the political nature of removing and disqualifying by impeachment an elected public official.

In my estimation, the context of Trillanes’ decision, while skipping the quasi-judicial histrionics transpiring in the Senate, makes it not difficult to realize that impeachment is “solely” a political process and the senators are no more than jurors (yes, jurors, not “judges”) whose biases, partiality, and political connections to the Vice President, the indicted official, render “vetting” unnecessary.

Vetting in jurisdictions that allow jury trials is the process of evaluating potential jurors to ensure they are unbiased and suitable for a trial, and involves background checks, social media analysis, personal interviews, and public records searches with the goal of ensuring their neutrality and impartiality. It does not happen in impeachment trials, the senators’ oath or affirmation notwithstanding, because an impeachment is a political “contact sport” involving belligerent contestation among the jurors themselves in a high-stakes partisan arena.

What is being seen and turning out now as a judicial drama before the impeachment court is as I see it, deemed by Trillanes as mere frosting on the cake. For when the impeached official is the President or the Vice President, impeachment is essentially an “un-election” (i.e., removal) and perpetual disqualification process that demands the full attention and involvement of the people sans the niceties and drudgery of a judicial proceeding.

Article XI, Section 1 of the 1987 Constitution (Accountability of Public Officers), makes it unquestionably clear that “public office is a public trust” and that “public officers” are “at all times accountable to the people.” These are fundamental declarations that are indubitably true when it comes to elected officials.

It is for the people to decide what they consider as “betrayal of public trust,” “culpable violation of the Constitution,” or “other high crimes,” impeachable misdeeds that are not defined by Philippine penal laws or other laws and hence resist a full delineation as the possible range of such misconduct in office could not be determined in advance but otherwise only guided by evolving precedents. What’s plain and logical is that these offenses are quintessentially “political offenses” against the state that demand “political punishments.”

Even at this stage of the impeachment trial against the Vice President, it is easy to concede that 99 percent of the senator-jurors would be voting along partisan lines. Unlike judges, it should be underscored, they are not mandated to justify the reason for their “yeas” or “nays.” They will vote for conviction or acquittal based on political expediency, subject to their own conscience as well as their calculation of the people’s verdict in the next electoral reckoning.