VP asks SC: Junk House MR on impeach case

The legal team of Vice President Sara Duterte has filed its comment on the motion for reconsideration lodged by the House of Representatives before the Supreme Court, which seeks to overturn an earlier SC ruling declaring her impeachment case unconstitutional.

- By BELLA CARIASO

Michael Poa, spokesman for Duterte and part of her 16-member legal team, said the opposition to the motion for reconsideration filed by the House was submitted on Monday, asking the SC to dismiss the MR for lack of merit.

In a 27-page comment, Duterte said the SC decision requires no factual correction, countering the House's claim that the ruling was based on a misunderstanding of events, such as the archiving of the first three complaints and the transmittal of the fourth without a plenary vote.

She said it is “misleading” for the House to suggest that the SC based its ruling on a misapprehension of the sequence of events, stressing that the decision rested on substantive legal grounds, not “incidental sequential detail.”

She added that the fourth complaint was sent to the Senate without a plenary vote, as Speaker Martin Romualdez merely inquired if there were objections.

The Vice President also said the House’s reliance on supposed compliance with the timeline of inclusion in the Order of Business “cannot conceal its wholesale disregard for the rest of the requirements under the fundamental law.”

“Clearly then, the Decision was not based on wrong factual premises necessitating corrections. If at all, the respondent HOR’s assertion of alleged factual errors in the Decision underscores its failure to grasp the constitutional constraints governing the impeachment process and its own transgression of those limits,” her comment read.

Duterte further argued that the motion was “unauthorized and legally infirm,” since it was not approved by the plenary of the 20th Congress.

She also maintained that the House failed to raise valid grounds, as the issues it cited had already been resolved by the Court.