Senate President Chiz Escudero must be pretty liberal with fleeting time, enamored with “stream-of-consciousness” movies or addicted to watches that run widdershins, or counter-clockwise. He may also be likened to “speed bagal,” a radio personality who speaks ever so slowly. Yet, Chiz is even better when he contrives “compelling” reasons why the Senate could conceivably not pursue what the 1987 Constitution mandates him to do, which is to constitute an impeachment court in the Senate and start the trial of the impeached public officer, in this case Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio.
Senate Rules and imagined procedures that kill impeachment trials because another set of lawmakers will take over the Upper Chamber don’t wash, and Chiz “Runny Nose” Escdudero knows this since impeachment trials are not legislative matters. Thus, they are unlike bills that must be refiled since the previous Senate failed to act on them. The Constitutional mandate is for Mr. Runny Nose to summon his ducks, put them in row and start the trial forthwith, as commanded by the Basic Law. All legal mumbo-jumbo about the 20th Congress being unauthorized to start the ball rolling since the impeachment complaint was filed during the 19th Congress is of moment, an irrelevant monkey wrench thrown into the ring to simply justify an unjust situation and provide a theory that defeats the very purpose of impeachment, which is to kick out top officials of the republic for betrayal of public trust, graft and
An impeachment case always emanates from the House of Representatives and when the complaint is received, read and set for trial, there is nothing in the Constitution that requires the Senate plenary to look into whether the complaint is more than sufficient in form and substance or not. It is the Lower House that looks into the allegations, not the Senate plenary, as what a defeated senator raised along with his theory that the complaint was “functionally dismissed.” Putting Duterte Jr. on trial is a task that the Senate must complete forthwith and Senate President Runny Nose has no discretion to delay it. Yet, Escudero delayed the process and nothing has been done since the complaint was filed on February 5, 2025 other than setting the reading of the impeachment complaint on June 3, only to be delayed to June 11.
For four months, the impeachment trial slept the sleep of the dead for reasons known only to Senate President Runny Nose. The decent excuse advanced was the trial would have to give way to “pressing legislative work,” as if the Senate were comprised of industrious lawmakers. Yet, has the Senate under Mr. Runny Nose, ever produced a decent law since Feb. 5 and again on June 3? The only legislative work undertaken by the industrious senators was one tiny bit of a resolution with 14 “whereases” that conspicuously has everything to do with killing the impeachment trial. Yes, the Senate draft resolution was making the rounds as confirmed by the senators, and eventually Mr. Tokhang himself admitted that the assailed resolution came from his own office despite his denials earlier.
Nothing in the Constitution permits de la Rosa and his subalterns to kill the impeachment trial through a flawed and disallowed resolution. On this basis alone, this resolution is dead in the water, even if Senate President Runny Nose denies that such a resolution was “filed” and was being circulated by the Duterte campaign. The resolution crafted by the legal eaglets under the aegis of Sen. Tokhang would kill the impeachment case to benefit Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, who has been slapped with seven articles of impeachment as a result of the investigation conducted by the committees of the Lower House and the submission of volumes of documents implicating Sara in the illegal disbursements of P612.5- million in confidential and intelligence funds from the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) that Sara also headed.
For starters, there was not a single centavo allotted for OVP in 2022 since the budget for the entire year still came the appropriations for then Vice President Leni Robredo, who did not enjoy a single centavo of CIF from 2016 to 2022. In short, the money Sara spent for CIF was illegally disbursed by Sara and her security men, all military officers, whom she had also illegally designated as “special disbursing officers” or SDOs. Right off the bat, Sara committed a basic error for which she must be punished. Moreover, the P125-million that she secured from the Palace was not from any CIF as it was sourced through the Malacanang Contingent Fund (CF) for which Sara is accountable.
For trying to do a “tokhang” on the impeachment trial through a dubious resolution that is based on a legal theory that is as clear as mud, de la Rosa must recuse himself. How could he stick around as a juror on the impeachment trial when, at the outset, he plotted to kill the process itself? This is indicative of the character of de la Rosa, forever beholden to the Dutertes, protective of Sara and who gives short shrift to Art. XI, Sec. 3, Paragraph 6 of the 1987 Constitution, which mandates the Senate to try all impeachment cases. Senate President Runny Nose and Sen. Tokhang do not have the power to approve any resolution that kills any impeachment trial.
Every observant citizen would suspect that the “speed bagal” style of Senate President Runny Nose and the resolution of Sen. Tokhang are cut from the same cloth and designed to frustrate the desire of 88% of Filipino respondents in Social Weather Stations (SWS) surveys who want the impeachment trial to proceed, for truckloads of evidence to be presented against Sara and for her to rebut allegations despite her arrogant claims that all the plots against her are meant to smother her presidential bid in 2028, as if it were hers for the taking. The trial will be a golden opportunity for Duterte Jr. to disprove the charges and show to every Filipino that the thousands of her informants are not fake and the 977,000 poor residents in Metro Manila that she sought to organize and finance are not phantoms of her opera.
