By Paolo S Tamase and Athena Charanne Presto
On 5 February 2025, the Philippine House of Representatives impeached Vice President Sara Duterte. Several allegations prompted the impeachment, including her implied death threats towards President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr, irregularities in her use of office funds, unexplained wealth, incitement of sedition, abuse of power and betrayal of public trust.
Following the impeachment, political commentaries have drawn attention to the rupture of UniTeam — Sara Duterte and Bongbong’s 2022 electoral alliance. But beyond this rupture, Duterte’s impeachment also signifies a shift at the heart of the Philippines’ democratic institutions.
Impeachment, as a constitutional mechanism, has shifted from being primarily a tool of moral accountability to becoming a mainly political strategy without clear ethical or democratic direction. This is not to argue against its political use or the progression of Duterte’s impeachment. Rather, it is an acknowledgement of how current political alliances exploit the process, sidelining impeachment’s role as a public safeguard as enshrined in the Constitution.
High-ranking officials have traditionally reserved impeachment for clear violations of ethical or legal duties, pursuing it alongside popular mobilisation. But the context surrounding Duterte’s impeachment suggests a strategic utility of this process, particularly as the country approaches the 2025 midterm elections and Duterte’s anticipated 2028 presidential bid (President Marcos is constitutionally limited to a single six-year term).
Impeaching public officials is not foreign to the Philippines’ recent political history. The 1987 Constitution, ratified after the fall of the Ferdinand Marcos Sr regime, included impeachment as an accountability mechanism for the highest constitutional officers. The House of Representatives has impeached five officials, including Duterte. Only two have advanced to trial in the Senate. The first trial, that of former president Joseph Estrada in 2001, was pre-terminated by his resignation after mass protests. The second, that of former Supreme Court chief justice Renato Corona in 2012, concluded in conviction.
Civil society supported Estrada and Corona’s impeachments, organising movements around moral governance and accountability. These impeachments were respectively seen as against a ‘gambler womaniser’ president and a chief justice who often ruled for the president who appointed him — acts which are not illegal per se, but undermine the moral fitness of these high officials. Notably, after Estrada resigned, active civic vigilance continued to fend off attempts to bypass term limits and protest the corruption of his successor.
Unlike these prior cases, the complaint that impeached Duterte in February stands out for lacking a clear moral or democratic actor or direction. While civic leaders, activists and religious figures opposed to both Duterte and Bongbong filed three impeachment complaints against Duterte, the House largely ignored them. Duterte’s impeachment advanced only when Bongbong’s congressional allies launched their own complaint via a rare procedural manoeuvre just as the House was supposed to go on a four-month recess. While corruption is among these charges, the principal allegation revolves around Duterte’s bizarre admission that she hired an assassin to kill Bongbong’s family.
The charges, since transmitted to the Senate for trial, raise serious concerns about the misuse, if not plundering, of public funds by Duterte and her fitness for public office. But with Bongbong’s allies dominating Congress, the impartiality and integrity of the impeachment process are in question.
Duterte’s impeachment illustrates how the moral framing of impeachment’s constitutional design is transitioning to pure political strategy. The articulation is crucial because while impeachment’s political utility is not in doubt, it was not intended to be a strategic tool. Rather, like in the United States, it was intended to be a moral crucible — a ‘national inquest into the conduct of public men’, before a Senate that is ‘sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent’.
The accusation of a betrayal of public trust, one of the grounds for Duterte’s impeachment, is a special legal concept that significantly affects Philippine politics. The Constitution’s framers intended this ground to be a ‘catchall phrase’ for any acts that make an official unfit for office. The Supreme Court has acknowledged that the Constitution sets no specific standards and that these matters were truly ‘political questions’ — better suited for Congress to decide than the courts.
The crux of the current difficulty lies in the erosion of trust in democratic institutions, which are supposed to wield impeachment powers with moral authority. After all, the Constitution’s premise is that democratically elected institutions can clearly assert moral accountability.
But with the decline in the quality of the Philippine Senate over the years and its capture by political dynasties, impeachment has become increasingly untethered from its moral foundations. When such bodies are perceived as compromised or biased, their decisions might further shake, rather than reinforce, democratic institutions.
This does not mean that the current impeachment is illegal and should not proceed, or that Duterte should not be removed from office. But this shift in the utilisation of impeachment highlights the need for heightened vigilance in the workings of supposed genuine democratic processes. This transformation also shows the perils of relying solely on grand institutions for moral accountability instead of more popular modes, like elections or sustained mass action and civic participation. Such reliance is risky if these institutions themselves are flawed or compromised.
Beyond the constitutional nature of impeachment, public perception and political narratives are likely to change in this particular case. For political observers inside the country and within the region, the Duterte impeachment will be an instructive case on constitutional tools and their sway in shaping political fortunes.
About the authors:
- Paolo S Tamase is Assistant Professor at the College of Law, University of Philippines Diliman.
- Athena Charanne Presto is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, University of the Philippines Diliman.
Source: This article was published by East Asia Forum
East Asia Forum
East Asia Forum is a platform for analysis and research on politics, economics, business, law, security, international relations and society relevant to public policy, centred on the Asia Pacific region. It consists of an online publication and a quarterly magazine, East Asia Forum Quarterly, which aim to provide clear and original analysis from the leading minds in the region and beyond.
Police arrested former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte as he arrived at Manila's international Airport © Jam STA ROSA / AFP
