Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte was impeached by the House of Representatives on Wednesday on charges including corruption, dereliction of duty, misuse of public funds, and plotting to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
“Duterte’s conduct throughout her tenure clearly displays gross faithlessness against public trust and a tyrannical abuse of power that, taken together, showcases her gross unfitness to hold public office and her infidelity to the laws and the 1987 Constitution,” the complaint said.
The impeachment complaint collected 215 signatures out of 306 seats in the lower house of the Philippine legislature, well over the threshold needed for her to be put on trial in the Senate.
The Senate will begin her trial when it reconvenes on June 2. Senate President Francis Escudero said on Thursday the Senate must be in regular session for the trial to proceed because the senators who act as jurors must be sworn in. Conviction would require a two-thirds majority in the Senate, which only has 24 seats.
Midterm elections are scheduled for May, so the impeachment drama could have a significant impact on the composition of the Senate. Marcos’ supporters hope the midterms will be a positive public referendum on his performance to date.
Just as the vote to impeach was lopsided against Duterte, so the vote to convict her in the Senate will probably be lopsided in her favor as her supporters hold the most seats there. One of the representatives who signed the impeachment complaint was President Marcos Jr.’s son, Rep. Sandro Marcos, while another was the president’s cousin, Speaker Martin Romualdez. Among the representatives who did not sign the complaint was Vice President Duterte’s brother, Paolo Duterte.
Rep. Paolo Duterte denounced the impeachment complaint as a “clear act of political persecution” against his sister on Wednesday.
Marcos Jr. and Duterte ran as a unity ticket in 2022, literally billing themselves as the “UniTeam.” Their alliance united the two most powerful families in Philippine politics. Marcos Jr. is the son of former president Ferdinand Marcos, who held the office from 1965 to 1986, while Duterte is the daughter of the president who completed his term in 2022, Rodrigo Duterte. Marcos’ father was ousted by a pro-democracy uprising in 1986, while Duterte’s father was under investigation by the International Criminal Court for human rights violations when he left office.
The alliance was always a little shaky as the Marcos and Duterte dynasties disagreed on some crucial points, especially how to deal with China.
President Marcos Jr. has stood firm against Chinese aggression and moved the Philippines closer to the United States, while his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte sought closer relations with the Chinese-Russian axis of tyranny — although the blustery Duterte alternated between inviting Beijing to annex the Philippines and threatening to send “suicide missions” to kill any Chinese invader who set foot on Philippine soil.
The relationship between the scions of the Marcos and Duterte houses turned sour soon after they took office — sour enough for Duterte to announce during a news conference in November that she hired an assassin to kill Marcos Jr., his wife, and Speaker Romuladez if anything untoward should happen to her.
“I’ve given my order, ‘If I die, don’t stop until you’ve killed them.’ And he said, ‘yes,’” she said at the November news conference, repeatedly insisting her threat was “no joke.”
Duterte’s critics believe she could afford a top-shelf hit man because she allegedly embezzled some $10.5 million in funding from her various offices. She has been accused of failing to properly declare her unexplained wealth. She has, in turn, accused the Marcos family of corruption and incompetence.
Duterte held additional positions as secretary of education and co-chair of an anti-insurgency task force called the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) when she became vice president, but she resigned from those posts last summer.
Duterte was also accused of undermining the president’s policies, particularly with regard to handling Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, which Filipinos call the West Philippine Sea. Duterte has publicly criticized Marcos Jr.’s policies as a “fiasco,” while refusing to criticize China at all.
“Her sheer evasiveness and silence on the West Philippine Sea issue, an issue that strikes at the core of Philippine sovereignty, is diametrically opposed to her being so loquacious as to other issues,” the impeachment complaint said.
Duterte and her supporters contend the impeachment effort is merely a gambit to keep her from succeeding Marcos Jr. as president when his term expires in 2028. If she is convicted in the Senate, she will be permanently barred from holding any public office.
Marcos Jr. insisted at a press conference on Thursday he had nothing to do with the impeachment complaint.
“I do not give guidance to Congress. Again, you give too much credit that I can tell congressmen to do this, and to do that. I cannot. I do not give guidance to Congress. We are independent of each other,” he said.
Marcos Jr. reminded reporters that his only public comment on Duterte’s potential impeachment involved telling the House of Representatives not to impeach her in November because he felt it would be a “waste of time.”
