The hearing of the impeachment complaint against VP Sara has yet to begin and it remains unclear when it will begin, if it ever will. The House of Representatives filed the impeachment complaint with the Senate last February 20, 2025, but four months have lapsed before any action was to happen. And what the nation witnessed was merely the wearing of the robes by the senators to make them appear dignified and truly honorable for their oath-taking as senator-judges.
What happened right after, was something that no law student could have expected a Senator-Judge would do: to make a motion to dismiss the impeachment complaint and for the presiding officer to entertain the said motion.
It is understandable that the senator-judge who made the motion is not a lawyer and, thus, is not knowledgeable of his role as a senator-judge who cannot make any motion because that is not his role as a JUDGE. He cannot make a motion to dismiss, which is the task of the lawyer for the accused or respondent, although it is very obvious that Senator Bato is acting to protect the Duterte clan.
In fact, he is supposed to be the enforcer of the DDS. He may yet see his boss at The Hague should the supposed warrant for his arrest be issued by the ICC. Perhaps, that could be the reason why Sen. Bato filed a motion to dismiss—in anticipation of his absence. Should the impeachment court run the full distance, he may not be there to cast his vote in favor of VP Sara.
But for a supposed very learned man of the law, whom some of his colleagues regard as a “legal luminary,” to entertain the “motion to dismiss” by Senator Bato, seconded by another Duterte-aligned Senator-Judge Bong Go, who may not also be around to vote for Sara, to be discussed for hours, is something incomprehensible again to a law student.
The motion could have been “Chizily” dispatched with by the “legal luminary” by diplomatically deferring the resolution of the motion at the later stage of the trial after the prosecution has presented their evidence. Or he could have just set aside the motion as being inappropriate for a senator-judge to make.
Perhaps, the “legal luminary” was playing politics to keep his position as senate president going into the 20th Congress, considering that there is now a move by some senators, including the newly elected ones, to push for Senator-elect Tito Sotto to be the next senate president, upon the convening of the Senate on July 28, 2025.
Instead, another senator-judge, also regarded by some of his colleagues as a “legal luminary,” came to the rescue with a “compromise solution to the impasse”, after hours of fruitless debate, by amending Senator-Judge Bato’s motion to dismiss by instead moving for the “return” of the impeachment complaint to the House of Representatives, which amended motion was accepted by the movant and approved with a majority vote of 18-5.
Of course, as opined by several legitimate legal pundits, including former Chief Justice Reynato Puno, who is the Chair of the Philippine Constitution Association, the act could constitute grave abuse of discretion and could undermine the most fundamental constitutional principle that a public office is a public trust.
The order of the Senate Impeachment Court to “return” the impeachment complaint against VP Sara to the House of Representatives to certify that it did not violate the constitutional prohibition that “no impeachment proceedings shall be initiated against the same official more than once within a period
of one year,” considering that there were circumstances when three impeachment complaints were filed, earlier, had unduly derailed the long-waited hearing of the case.
The said order also directed the incoming 20th Congress to comment if it is still willing to prosecute the impeachment complaint filed against VP Sarah, which will, in effect await its reorganization, that is, convening the Congress to elect the Speaker of the House and the other floor leaders and committees, particularly the relevant committee to whom the impeachment complaint will be referred to for study and recommendation on the willingness or not by said House to continue prosecuting the complaint.
Considering that the order of the Senate Impeachment Court did not set a time limit for the House of Representatives to act on its order, expect the pro-Duterte and anti-Duterte factions in and out of the House to “lobby” for or against “willingness” to continue prosecuting the complaint.
However, the House of Representatives just very recently approved a resolution that it complied with the Constitution and directed the Secretary-General to issue a certification in accordance with it. But it also approved another resolution that the House will defer acceptance of the impeachment complaint to be returned by the Senate until such time that the Impeachment Court clarifies the query by the prosecution (the House) relative to the return of the impeachment complaint to the House.
With all these acts of our HONORABLES in Congress that have excessively delayed the start of the impeachment trial, another PEOPLE POWER happening IS NOT REMOTE.
