‘No bloodbath, you’re the one on trial’

The constitutional process of impeachment has no room for the “chaos and theatrics” favored by Vice President Sara Duterte, whose calls for a “bloodbath” trial are out of place in what should be a “truth-seeking” proceeding, two House prosecutors said on Monday, May 19.

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In separate statements, members of the House prosecution team Representatives-elect Leila De Lima (ML party-list) and Lorenz Defensor (Iloilo) dismissed Duterte’s remarks of wanting a combative proceeding. Instead, both congressmen-elect said they expect to hold a trial where the strength of the evidence will determine the outcome.

This comes after Duterte told reporters in a chance interview on May 16 that she had told her lawyers she was in favor of having the impeachment trial proceed, saying: “I truly want a trial because I want a bloodbath.”

In the same interview, Duterte said she had no expectations for an acquittal or guilty verdict as she was “already at peace.” The vice president also called Duterte and Akbayan party-list nominee Chel Diokno’s addition to the prosecution team “understandable” as both have been “anti-Duterte since birth.”

De Lima characterized Duterte’s rhetoric as being in step with her family’s “trademark” pattern of “panggugulo, kayabangan, pagiging arogante (chaos-making, arrogance, being arrogant).”

"In an impeachment trial, the only one who is on trial is the person impeached. So there can be no bloodbath,” De Lima said in a statement on Sunday, May 18. “If any blood is spilled, it can only be that of the person impeached, not the prosecutors’, not the senators-judges’, not the administration’s, not the people’s.”