Leaning on SC ruling, Sara Duterte camp shrugs off new impeachment case

MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Sara Duterte’s legal team dismissed on Monday, February 2, the newly filed impeachment complaints against her, saying they were ready to confront the accusations and confident they would collapse under scrutiny.  

“The filing of new impeachment complaints against the Vice President comes as no surprise,” said lawyer Michael Poa, speaking for Duterte’s defense team, in a statement released Monday.

The statement came after lawmakers from the Makabayan bloc refiled an impeachment complaint against Duterte before the Office of the House Secretary General, citing alleged betrayal of public trust over the use of confidential funds by the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education.

Poa said Duterte's legal team is prepared to address the allegations “squarely through the proper constitutional processes." He expressed confidence that a fair review would expose the complaints as lacking both factual and legal basis.

It remains to be seen how exactly Duterte intends to confront renewed impeachment efforts against her following the Supreme Court’s January 28 ruling that voided earlier impeachment articles for violating the constitutional one-year ban.  

Besides throwing out with finality Duterte's first impeachment case, the decision by the high court had also laid down more detailed standards on how impeachment complaints should be initiated and processed. 

In its January 28 resolution, the Supreme Court clarified when the Constitution’s one-year bar on impeachment is triggered, ruling that even impeachment complaints that are filed but not acted upon — or not referred to the House justice committee within required periods — can already count as an “initiation” that blocks subsequent complaints within a year.

The court also adopted a stricter definition of “session days,” interpreting them as calendar days when the House is in session, rather than cumulative legislative days. Applying this interpretation, the court said the one-year bar against Duterte had already been triggered earlier than Congress claimed, making the transmittal of the impeachment articles to the Senate unconstitutional. 

Lawmakers critical of the ruling said the Supreme Court effectively tightened impeachment timelines and procedural requirements and made it easier for impeachment complaints to be junked on technical grounds. 

It was against that backdrop that Poa's statement cited the Supreme Court to emphasize that impeachment processes should not be driven by public pressure or political noise.

As the Supreme Court wrote, Poa said, impeachment is “not merely a political process initiated by mere allegations or by perceived public acclaim shaped by the propagandistic effect of timed press releases or irresponsible viral posts on social media.”