Filing an impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte is “the right thing to do,” according to former senator Leila de Lima, spokesperson of the 16 individuals who filed the complaint at the House of Representatives on Monday. 

The last straw for Francis Joseph Aquino Dee was Duterte’s profanity-laden rant late last month that she had ordered a hit on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., first lady Liza Araneta Marcos and Speaker Martin Romualdez. 

“VP Sara really crossed the line,” Dee, who is among the members of civil society and advocacy groups who filed the complaint, told CoverStory.ph in a Zoom interview on Tuesday. 

For months now Duterte has been fending off allegations of misusing confidential funds allocated to the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education, but this impeachment complaint—the first, with another one said to be forthcoming—is the most serious threat yet to her political power. She headed the DepEd as education secretary starting in 2022 but quit the post in June.

In seeking her ouster from office, the complainants cited culpable violation of the Constitution, graft and corruption, bribery, betrayal of public trust, and other high crimes. Akbayan Rep. Percival Cendaña endorsed the complaint. 

For Dee, 33, a grandson of the late former senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. and the late former president Corazon “Cory” Aquino, Duterte’s threat against the Office of the President was the most serious of the impeachable offenses.

“To be candid, I’m more angry with the Marcoses than with Sara because of the many things they did to our family … What did they do to my lolo? He was assassinated. What did they do to my lola? She was the victim of coup [attempts],” he said.

Opposition leader Ninoy Aquino was assassinated on his return to Manila from exile in the United States on Aug. 21, 1983. After strongman Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was ousted in the February 1986 “People Power Revolution,” Cory Aquino assumed the presidency. She faced a series of coup attempts by state forces, including Marcos Sr. loyalists, during her term.

“But I’ll be a hypocrite if I don’t call out the action against my enemy. We have a constitution. Fighting for it was the lifelong advocacy of my lolo Ninoy. My lola Cory, for her part, pushed for a constitution that restored democracy,” said Dee, who now serves as the executive director of the Ninoy and Cory Aquino Foundation.  

“I’ll be a hypocrite if I turn my back on my principles just because I hate those sitting in power,” he added.

In a virtual presser with supporters in the wee hours of Nov. 23, Duterte launched into a rant against the First Couple and Romualdez over an order to transfer her chief of staff Zuleika Lopez from her detention room in the House to the women’s prison in Mandaluyong City. 

“I have given instructions that if I die, do not stop until you kill [the three personalities], and he said yes,” Duterte said in a mix of English and Filipino. She claimed to be acting as legal counsel for Lopez, who was cited in contempt by the House committee on good government and public accountability, which is looking into the Vice President’s supposed misuse of confidential funds.

China’s aggression

Another complainant, Fr. Flavie Villanueva, said that on top of her threats against the First Couple and Romualdez, Duterte should be held accountable for her failure to condemn China’s aggression in the West Philippine Sea and for her role in Davao City’s antidrug campaign from 2011 to 2013 when she was its mayor.  

The first constitutes betrayal of public trust, and the second high crime, said Villanueva, who founded “Project Paghilom” to offer legal and psychosocial support for widows and orphans of drug suspects killed in then President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal “war on drugs.”

Villanueva also said Sara Duterte’s “tantrums” in televised congressional hearings on her use of confidential funds—from her refusal to answer questions to interrupting the presiding officer—were “unbecoming behavior that betrays her office.” 

“For a Filipino woman to act like this is a new form of ‘Pano-nokhang’,” Villanueva said via Zoom, referring to the Filipino term “tokhang” used in the elder Duterte’s antidrug campaign that killed thousands. “It isn’t just blowing up one’s skull, but shattering the truth, spitting on decency, mocking the Office of the Vice President,” he said.

‘Escalation of misbehavior’

The lawyer De Lima told CoverStory.ph that the “escalation of misbehavior” on the part of the Vice President and the series of disclosures on her possible misuse of public funds should have prompted the investigating House committee to file an impeachment complaint against her.   

Because no such complaint has been filed, the 16 individuals took the matter into their own hands, De Lima said via Zoom on Tuesday night.

“Through the filing of the impeachment complaint yesterday, [the complainants] just want to trigger and jumpstart the impeachment process,” she said.

De Lima defended the filing of the complaint against arguments that the House has little time to hear it between the holiday season and the kick-off of the national campaign in February for the 2025 midterm elections. 

“It’s the view of the complainants that this is the right thing to do at this point because we can’t afford to see further misbehavior, further blatant acts of violation of law and violation of the Constitution, violation of the principles of transparency and accountability,” De Lima said.

Besides, she added, there’s a faster route than holding a committee hearing on the complaint: The House can adopt a resolution of impeachment with the corresponding articles of impeachment by a vote of one-third of all members, and then elevate it to the Senate.  

President Marcos has called on lawmakers not to waste their time impeaching the Vice President even as the Quezon City police filed charges against her for preventing her aide Lopez’s transfer from House detention to the women’s prison on Nov. 23.

De Lima observed that these are “mixed signals” to the public. “Let’s put a stop to the ambivalence, ambiguity, indecision, hesitance, and do the right thing. This process is about showing the supremacy of the law,” she said.

What’s at stake

Dee agreed that the President’s call was meant to allay public fears sparked by the Vice President’s threats, but said it was about time Marcos showed “some leadership” and the Romualdez-led House exercised independence from Malacañang.

What’s at stake is the Office of the President as “an institution,” Dee reminded the lawmakers. “It’s another thing to say that we do not respect the personality sitting there, but the Office he’s occupying is important.”

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