Trial by delay
In Philippine bureaucracy, delay is a form of governance. Committees bury bills. “Further study” means forget it. Reform is where good ideas go to die. But seldom has stalling struck so directly at the Constitution as in the case of Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment.
When Chief Justice Renato Corona was impeached in 2011, the Senate convened the day after receiving the complaint. Trial began in weeks.
Today? The Duterte complaint arrived Feb. 5. Four months later, the chamber is still wrapped in the language of protocol.
The Constitution isn’t subtle. Article XI, Section 3(4) says once a verified complaint is endorsed by a third of House members, “the same shall constitute the Articles of Impeachment, and trial by the Senate shall forthwith proceed.” Not “eventually.” Not “if the schedule allows.” Forthwith. It’s a constitutional trumpet, not a lunch break yawn.
Yet the Senate plays for time. It cites presentation agenda, committee detours, and sacred recesses. Delay becomes strategy, dressed up as scheduling.
This is not interpretation—it’s evasion. The Supreme Court has warned against such textual gymnastics. For example, in Chavez v. Judicial and Bar Council, it ruled that Congress gets only one representative in the JBC—not two—because the Constitution says “a representative.” This wasn’t about grammar. It was about the rule of law. When the Constitution speaks clearly, Congress doesn’t get a remix.
Some senators murmur that impeachment can’t carry over to the next Congress. But that’s legal fiction bordering on magical realism. The Senate is a continuing body. It doesn’t dissolve like the House does. In 2004, then senator Nene Pimentel argued that a joint canvassing committee lost its authority when Congress adjourned. The Supreme Court disagreed. Constitutional duties don’t expire with the session. The job must be done.
Ironically, Sen. Koko Pimentel—son of the petitioner—now seems to invoke the court ruling to remind his colleagues that the Senate must act. He cites the chamber’s own impeachment rules, adopted from the Corona trial and patterned after the US Senate’s. Once trial begins, all other business halts. The Senate meets daily until “final judgment shall be rendered.” No recess. No rewind.
Impeachment is not just any job. It is a crucible. When the Senate receives articles of impeachment, it swaps its legislative cloak for judicial robes. It becomes a court. And courts don’t close shop because the calendar flips.
In the US, the practice affirms the principle. Bill Clinton’s Senate trial began in January 1999, under a new Congress, after impeachment by the outgoing House. In 1804, Judge John Pickering’s trial also proceeded in a new Congress, though the articles arrived just as the old one ended.
Impeachment, it turns out, doesn’t punch a timecard. It clocks in until justice clocks out.
And yet here, the Senate floats other plans. Senate President Francis Escudero says there’s legislation to finish before June 14. Majority Leader Francis Tolentino warns of a “functional dismissal” if trial can’t finish before June 30, when old senators depart. It’s less a countdown to justice than a countdown to cowardice.
But as constitutional law scholar Michael Gerhardt has noted in How Impeachment Works (87 Mo. L. Rev. 2022): impeachments ultimately “test nearly everyone.” Not the least of whom is the Senate: to render “impartial justice according to the laws and Constitution.”
By doing nothing, the Senate risks doing something far worse: normalizing delay as dismissal. When silence becomes strategy, accountability dies not with a bang, but by default.
Sen. Bato dela Rosa has even suggested throwing out the complaint entirely. The logic? “We didn’t act, so there’s nothing to act on.” It’s either legislative amnesia, or “obstruction dressed as protocol” as Sen. Risa Hontiveros put it.
Citizens may disagree on whether Duterte is guilty. That is what a trial is for. But they should not have to disagree on whether she deserves a trial. That is what the Constitution is for. The Senate still has time to act—but it’s running out of excuses. With every day of delay, the burden of history grows heavier: did they uphold the Constitution, or dodge it?
It’s not strongmen who bury democracy. It’s institutions that fail to show up.
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Noel B. Lazaro was part of the defense team of Chief Justice Renato C. Corona in the 2012 impeachment trial. He teaches Remedial Law subjects and writes opinion pieces on constitutional and environmental issues.
