Philippine lawmakers yesterday voted by a wide margin to impeach Phlilippine Vice President Sara Duterte, setting the stage for a Senate trial that could end her 2028 presidential bid.
The articles of impeachment accuse the daughter of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte of graft, corruption, bribery and an alleged assassination plot against former ally, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
Under the Philippine constitution, a guilty verdict in the Senate would remove Sara Duterte from office and bar her from elected office for life.
“This is no longer just about politics. This is about conscience, duty and the future of our nation,” Philippine Representative Bienvenido Abante said immediately following the vote.
“This is not about 2028, this is not about political alliances, this is about whether we still believe that no one is above the law,” Abante said.
Lawmakers voted by a margin of 255 to 26 — with nine abstentions — to impeach.
The articles focus on misappropriation of public funds, unexplained assets, bribery of public officials, and an alleged death threat against Marcos and other family members.
The threat against Marcos stemmed from a late-night news conference in which Sara Duterte claimed to have hired an assassin to kill the president should he have her cut down first.
She later said her comments had been misinterpreted.
In a statement released after yesterday’s vote, Sara Duterte’s defense counsel said the burden of proof now lay with her accusers.
“We are fully prepared to defend the vice president before the Senate sitting as an Impeachment Court,” the statement said.
Sara Duterte and Marcos have been engaged in a high-stakes political brawl that erupted within weeks of their 2022 presidential election victory, when the vice president was denied her desired defense portfolio and instead named secretary of education.
The feud exploded into open warfare last year with her first impeachment, and the subsequent arrest and transfer of her father to face charges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, tied to his deadly drug war.
It marks the second time the vice president has been impeached on mostly the same charges.
The Senate trial that followed her first impeachment saw senators don robes and convene a court on live television, only to send the case back to the House, a decision one lawmaker called a “functional dismissal.”
The upper chamber is now even more solidly stacked in Sara Duterte’s favor after a slate of candidates loyal to her outperformed expectations in May last year’s midterm elections, winning five of 12 open seats.
As the House impeachment vote got under way yesterday, longtime ally Philippine Senator Alan Peter Cayetano was voted in as the new Senate president in an election that had not been tipped beforehand.
Dennis Coronacion, chair of the political science department at Manila’s University of Santo Tomas, said before Cayetano’s election that he believed an acquittal was “highly possible” given the Senate’s new makeup.
However, the impeachment process and presentation of evidence against her were still likely to take a toll on Sara Duterte’s presidential hopes, he said.
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