The Philippine Supreme Court has ruled that an impeachment case filed against Vice President Sara Duterte violated the country’s constitution due to a key technicality. The House of Representatives, which impeached Duterte in February and sent the case to the Senate for trial, violated a rule that only one impeachment case could be processed by the lower chamber against an impeachable official in a single year. Duterte, 47, became the first vice president of the Philippines to be impeached by the House in February over an array of alleged high crimes.
The accusations were led by her threat during a November online news conference to have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife and cousin, then-House Speaker Martin Romualdez, killed by an assassin if she were killed herself during her high-profile disputes with them. Duterte has been accused of large-scale corruption, sedition, terrorism, and failing to openly support Philippine government efforts to oppose and denounce China’s aggressive actions against Filipino forces in the disputed South China Sea.
Her impeachment trial was set to begin either next week or early next month by the 24-member Senate, which has convened to hear the case. If the Supreme Court ruling becomes final, the vice president’s opponents could file another impeachment case after a year.
Duterte ran as Marcos’s running mate in 2022 on a campaign battle cry of unity in their deeply divided and poverty-stricken Southeast Asian country. However, their whirlwind political alliance rapidly frayed when they took office. The impeachment complaint signatories included the president’s son, Rep. Sandro Marcos, and Romualdez, urging the Senate to shift into an impeachment court to try the vice president, “render a judgement of conviction,” remove her from office, and ban her from holding public office.
