Akbayan files intervention in Sara Duterte’s Supreme Court plea to junk impeachment
Credit to Author: Dominique Nicole Flores| Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2025 15:34:00 +0800
MANILA, Philippines — Rep. Perci Cendaña (Akbayan Party-list) filed a motion to intervene on Friday, July 25, before the Supreme Court on the petition of Vice President Sara Duterte to dismiss her impeachment.
Nearly half a year has passed since Duterte was impeached by 215 members of the House. The vice president immediately defended herself by filing a petition asking the high court to nullify the impeachment based on allegations that the complaint lodged was unconstitutional.
She argued that the impeachment violated the one-year bar rule, where only one proceeding against the same impeachable public official can be launched in a year — assuming multiple complaints couldn’t be filed.
There were three impeachment complaints filed with the Office of the Secretary General before the filing of at least one-third of the lower chamber was initiated. Cendaña was the one who endorsed the first complaint filed by civil society groups in December 2024.
It has been made clear, time and again by legal luminaries and the House prosecution panel, that the mere filing of an impeachment complaint does not constitute the initiation of a proceeding unless it is done by at least a third of the House or has already been referred to the Committee on Justice.
This was the Supreme Court’s decision in Francisco vs. House of Representatives in 2003.
“The Vice President’s petition is legally unsound. Ang reklamo nila, na-violate raw ang one-year ban on initiating impeachment complaints. Apat ang impeachment complaints na na-file, pero isa lang doon ang initiated, at yun ang verified complaint na ipinasa ng more than 1/3 ng House members,” Cendaña said in a statement.
(Their complaint is that the one-year ban on initiating impeachment complaints was supposedly violated. Four impeachment complaints were filed, but only one of them was initiated, and that’s the verified complaint endorsed by more than one-third of House members.)
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In a comment attached to his motion, he urged the Supreme Court to dismiss Duterte’s petition for lack of merit.
“These arguments are untenable as they are contrary to established law and jurisprudence,” he said.
“There is no room for any further interpretation or definition of what the initial act is, given that it has already been defined unequivocally by the Supreme Court,” Cendaña added.
He further warned that a favorable ruling for Duterte would weaken the constitutional role of the House in impeachment, which grants it exclusive power to initiate it, and allude that transparency and accountability can be set aside.
“It would also show the general public that it has ‘monarchs’ rather than elected officials accountable to them,” the comment read.
“It will allow the incumbent Vice President to get away scot-free, despite the clear anomalies that she is embroiled in and has failed to explain, and the funds she failed to properly account for,” it added.
Duterte is facing charges of violating the Constitution, betraying public trust, graft and corruption, and other high crimes — including bribery and conspiracy to commit murder.
Central to the verified impeachment complaint is the alleged misuse of P612.5 million in confidential funds from both the Office of the Vice President and DepEd during her time as education secretary from 2022 to 2023.
The Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, has since delayed proceedings with attempts to dismiss the impeachment without a trial. It has also put proceedings on hold until the 20th Congress officially convenes on July 28.
With the Supreme Court acting on Duterte's petition, the House filed its compliance with the high court's directive to provide information on the impeachment on July 18, asserting the complaint's constitutionality.