Why this trial matters

THERE is talk of a Senate dismissal of the impeachment case against the vice president. Dismissal is not a constitutional option. An impeachable public official who has been indicted by the House of Representatives, against whom articles of impeachment have been duly filed, is freed from liability only by acquittal following a trial by the Senate. This does not foreclose the filing of appropriate criminal cases against the offender when he or she leaves public office.

There is nothing more frustrating than for the highest officials of the land to hoodwink the nation. In February, the House of Representatives impeached the vice president. The requisite number of endorsers was verified. The impeachment complaints — there were three actually! — became, by virtue of express constitutional provision, the articles of impeachment. Chiz Escudero, for reasons known only to him, was steadfast in his refusal to convene the Senate as the court of impeachment, despite having been educated by so many who know the Constitution on the meaning of “forthwith.” He refused to learn.

When, after the midterm election break, the Senate re-convened, Escudero went through the motions of taking his oath as presiding officer of the impeachment court, as did most of the senators who donned their robes and had their pictures taken in them. At the same time, the Senate took the inexplicable, contradictory move of remanding the articles of impeachment to the House of Representatives while requiring of the respondent vice president that she answer the charges. It is a sickening rigmarole, and there can be no more blatant display of a misuse of power and a palpable violation of the Constitution than the Senate leadership’s perfidy!

Meanwhile, the respondent vice president has filed an answer “ex abundanti cautela” — also expressed as an answer “ad cautelam.” The qualifier suggests that the respondent does not fully accept that she is legally obligated to respond, but she nevertheless files one lest she be adjudged in default. Predictably, she raises the jurisdictional question: Whether the Senate of the 20th Congress has jurisdiction to try a case filed by the Lower House of the 19th Congress. Clearly, it is a question of constitutional law, and while, under the classical doctrine of separation of powers, it is the Supreme Court that ultimately rules on questions of law, the matter is correctly addressed to the Senate, upon which the Constitution vests the sole power to try an impeached official. This will not, jurisprudence has made clear, divest the Supreme Court of its power to interpret the Constitution with finality in an action properly brought — and that predictably will be brought — however the Senate may rule on the issue of jurisdiction.

This is the reason that when there was created in 2016 a consultative committee to study the 1987 Constitution, of which I was a member and over which retired chief justice Reynato Puno and former Senate president Nene Pimentel presided, we thought it best to adopt the system in other jurisdictions of assigning the trial of impeachment cases of the highest officials of the land to a constitutional court. That would insulate what should be truly judicial proceedings from the horse-trading, the foot-dragging, the backroom deals that a large part of the nation has suspected are behind the drawn-out prelude to what should be a necessary measure of accountability — the trial of the vice president.

Now, the nation waits with bated breath for what happens next. But whatever it may decide, the staggering amounts that it is alleged the vice president’s office spent in a jiffy are certainly no petty matter that can be swept under the rug of political compromise. If we are to make a dent in the ginormous evil of corruption that has long plagued the Philippines, this is one important measure. I am not saying that the vice president has been corrupt. The purpose of the trial is precisely to listen to the evidence against her as well as to her rebuttal. In July and September of 2023, the Commission on Audit informed the public that the Office of the Vice President had spent P125 million in just 11 days. That certainly has to be explained — and while many make much of a supposed COA “unmodified opinion” that apparently clears the vice president of any wrongdoing, aside from the dubious veracity of what originally appeared on a Facebook post, COA is not the agency or branch of government that passes upon culpability and criminal or administrative liability. That is why there has to be a trial!

The vice president is a lawyer — and I am sure she agrees that acquittal at a trial should be a big gain for her credibility, and certainly not the shortcut of a dismissal.