VP challenges 4th impeach rap at SC

Vice President Sara Duterte has asked the Supreme Court (SC) to nullify the impeachment case lodged against her for allegedly violating the constitutional provision that bars the filing of more than one complaint within one year once proceedings have been initiated.

- DAPHNE GALVEZ

Duterte filed a petition for certiorari and prohibition on Feb. 18 through the Fortun Narvasa & Salazar law offices, which sought a temporary restraining order against the Senate from acting on the fourth impeachment complaint transmitted by the House of Representatives, which serves as the Articles of Impeachment.

Duterte's father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, has signed on as legal counsel in her petition before the SC, along with five other lawyers.

In her petition, the Vice President argued that the House of Representatives "deliberately circumvented" the one-year bar provision by directing its secretary general to allegedly give them more time to file the fourth impeachment complaints despite the filing of three separate complaints in December last year.

The reason for this, she said, is to allow the House members to gather the required number of signatures “to railroad the impeachment process to beat the May 12, 2025 elections.”

“Unfortunately, this political stratagem was done at the expense of constitutional standards that respondents, as public officers, are mandated to observe, with the ultimate goal of having the petitioner perpetually disqualified from running for any national elective office in the future,” Duterte’s petition read.

Under Article XI, Section 3(5) of the Constitution, no impeachment proceedings “shall be initiated against the same official more than once within a period of one year.”

Duterte contended that by directing House Secretary General Reginald Velasco to “freeze” the first three impeachment complaints, the House of Representatives “committee grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction by circumventing and violating the one-year bar.”