[OPINION] Duterte impeachment trial Day 2: Why is the last article the first?
It was the leaders of the prosecution team who proposed to the impeachment court that they wanted to present first the last in the four articles of the impeachment complaints they filed seeking the removal of Vice President Sara Duterte from the horizon in the May 2028 presidential elections.
The defense team agreed, and thus the presiding officer, senator-judge Chiz Escudero, ruled that on the second day of the trial, the court would hear the fourth complaint.
The fourth article covers allegations of assassination threats, inciting to sedition, and subversion of constitutional order against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and former House Speaker Martin Romualdez. The rest are about corruption.
Sara’s threat
In Tuesday’s hearing, the prosecution, amid tight objections by the defense counsel, was trying to reinforce that the alleged threats Duterte issued, in a fit of anger, in a video recording that she had contracted an assassin to kill Marcos, the First Lady, and Romualdez, if she herself were assassinated. She was supposed to have said that she was willing to decapitate Marcos herself.
Because she believed that, if she were assassinated, these would be the same people who could be behind it. In other words, the VP was accusing these people of a similar threat on her life.
“Minsan nasabi ko kay Senator Imee, kung hindi kayo tumigil, huhukayin ko ang tatay ninyo, at itatapon ko sa West Phil Sea,” the recording quoted Duterte as saying.
Presumably, Duterte was referring to the continuing threats she was receiving from the other camp.
Why this detail, the provenance, or the causativity of her own threat got lost in the appreciation of her own threat against the Marcoses only showed that people would see what they only wanted to see.
The Palace had condemned Duterte’s statement as an active threat. That one action has its consequences. What goes around, comes around. Thus, the prosecution was trying to pin her down with Article 4, the first display of the prosecution’s firepower.
On the second day of the impeachment trial, the prosecution panel dismissed the provenance of the original threat and began to zero in on its aftermath—or of the VP making her own threat.
But here lies the difference. The threat from the President’s camp, even if true, was not said in public and needed to be verified and investigated.
On the other hand, Duterte’s own threat was publicized, and that she had commissioned someone to avenge her death, if it happens. And the public feasted on it.
Enter NBI
The prosecution’s private lawyer introduced NBI Agent John Mark Calilung, with two years of digital forensic investigation, to authenticate the video. Both made a big fuss of the tape. The defense lawyer was quick to point out the documentary requirements of the testimony, triggering a series of back-and-forth exchanges.
A second witness for Article 4, lawyer Jeremy Lotoc, an NBI regional director, was still waiting to be called to the witness stand.
But whether the video really existed, or that the VP really issued the violent statement, was really no cause for a debate. Duterte never denied it—she was only emphasizing that her statement was a result, not the cause, of the threats being talked about. Hers was a matter of direct response to a personal threat she received.
Here lies the question, in dealing with threats and counter-threats: Why would one person blame another for how he reacted, but the accuser would never recognize what he himself did to make the other person react like that?
Should the pot be allowed to just call the kettle black—and get away with it? It is the matter for the impeachment court to settle, of course.
All these many, many months, the public has been aware of the video recording of the Vice President’s threat. Information-wise, yes. It was the talk of the town for a long, long time.
But what the prosecution was trying now was to provide flesh to its stance that the proof was proof of her culpable violation of the Constitution and yes, that she was unfit to lead, not worth replacing Marcos now—or the next 2028 elections.
What the public didn’t know, or what was unclear to the public, were the circumstances that culminated in the video recording, or what Duterte was trying to say that there was a continuing threat against her own safety.
Among others, she had complained of lawmakers, Romualdez among them, of trying to take a huge chunk of the budget earmarked for new school buildings from the Department of Education in 2023, and that when she turned it down, the House allegedly tripled the budget but only to take the additional budget as its own.
She called Romualdez Tambaloslos, a Cebuano pejorative term used to describe someone as foolish, shameless.
She complained of the arrest and detention of her chief of staff, lawyer Zuleika Lopez, in late 2024, after having been cited by the House of Representatives for being uncooperative.
Next to what she said on video, Duterte has in fact issued so many other statements, oral and written, that could easily be misconstrued as irresponsible, provocative, if not outright combative and disrespectful of her colleagues in government: “bloodbath,” “designated survivor.” She openly criticized Marcos, but this country had a long history of vice presidents hitting their own presidents.
There were many more, but it was probably up to the defense panel to bring it up, if necessary. Judging by the depth of Duterte’s hatred of Marcos, there could have been more happening behind closed doors in the corridors of power.
By 2023, it was becoming obvious that the UniTeam, which bound Marcos and Duterte in the May 2022 elections, was on the verge of collapse.
In January 2024, both Marcos and Duterte’s father, former president Rodrigo Duterte launched their separate movements, this time the two exchanging scathing remarks at each other.
In May 2025, Duterte’s father was arrested and brought to the Hague. Vice President Duterte, who had been all along hostile toward her father, raised hell in defense of the father. All bets have been off since then between Marcos and Duterte.
All this time, Duterte has topped popularity surveys.
Meanwhile, Marcos caught himself flooded with controversies of mismanaging the economy and allegations of corruption, including the use of public funds earmarked for flood control involving Romualdez, former Rep. Zaldy Co, and several others.
The prospects of Duterte getting elected in May 2028 have since hounded Marcos’ supporters and the camp of certain lawmakers.
The public would see next an endless barrage of criticisms being hurled publicly against each other, most especially on social media involving their respective supporters.
On the second day of the trial, the prosecution was still mum about the declaration of the presiding officer that 2/3 is 16, giving credence to suspicions that the House team was not really after a conviction, but the destruction of Duterte in the bar of public opinion before the May 2028 elections.
Bar of public opinion
The numbers game had been so frustrating for the prosecution, but by some twist of fate, so many members of the Senate had been arrested for corruption and taken away from the trial.
On the first day of the trial, House prosecution chief Gerville Luistro and member Lorenz Defensor opened their preliminary statement by obviously appealing to the emotions of the public about Duterte’s culpable offenses.
It was on purpose that they chose to tackle first Article 4, not the first three articles, which zero in on Duterte’s alleged corruption.
The first three articles are too technical, given all the bank transactions, according to Rep. Zia Alonto Adiong, spokesman of the prosecution panel. The last one “is easy to understand.”
There is the impeachment court. And there is the bar of public opinion.
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