The House of Representatives impeached Vice President Sara Duterte and immediately transmitted the complaint to the Senate on Wednesday, the last session day of Congress before it takes a four-month-long break for the midterm campaign and elections in May.

“This complaint unmasks Sara Zimmerman Duterte, Vice President of the Republic, for what she truly is. She has not only conducted herself in a manner contrary to and woefully short of the lofty standards to which we hold our public officials, she has also clearly and blatantly committed culpable violations of the Constitution, betrayed the public trust, engaged in graft and corruption, and committed other high crimes,” states the impeachment complaint.

It was signed by 215 members of the House, far more than one-third of the 306 members required for the complaint to be passed. 

The Senate adjourned session Wednesday night with no announcement on when it will convene as an impeachment court. Congress resumes its session on June 2. 

But last December, Senate President Francis Escudero said impeachment proceedings can be conducted without need for a congressional session.

Citing the case of the late former chief justice Renato Corona, who was impeached by the House on Dec. 12, 2011, and then convicted by the Senate on May 11, 2012, Escudero said the impeachment proceedings will continue even during the session break.

“This is not a congressional session like our session where the House of Representatives also needs to have a session. The impeachment proceedings are a unique process that is not covered and is outside the ordinary session,” Escudero told a Senate forum last Dec. 4.

Speaker Martin Romualdez and Ilocos Norte Rep. Sandro Marcos, the cousin and son of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., respectively, were among the 215 signatories to the impeachment complaint. The young Marcos was first and the Speaker was last.

Duterte’s brother, Davao City Rep. Paolo Duterte, posted on Facebook that he was “appalled and enraged by the desperate and politically motivated efforts to railroad the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte.”

He said the administration was undermining democracy and warned that “this reckless abuse of power will not end in their favor.”

The President had earlier said he was not agreeable to the impeachment of his erstwhile ally, the other half of the “UniTeam” that won by a landslide in the 2022 elections. 

Fourth complaint

Cheers and applause rang out on the session floor after Romualdez declared that the House plenary had approved the verified impeachment complaint against the Vice President.

It is the fourth impeachment complaint against her. The three others filed late last year have been archived by the chamber. 

The House announced the names of those who will serve as prosecutors at the Senate impeachment trial: Representatives Gerville Luistro, Romeo Acop, Ramon Rodrigo Gutierrez, Joel Chua, Raul Angelo Bongalon, Loreto Acharon, Marcelino Libanan, Arnan Panaligan, Ysabel Maria Zamora, Lorenz Defensor and Jonathan Keith Flores.

The 33-page complaint states: “…[W]ithin less than three years since having assumed the Vice Presidency, which is the second highest executive office in the country, respondent Duterte has repeatedly, egregiously, and grossly violated her solemn oath.

“Indeed, respondent Duterte pursued actions that amount to culpable violations of the Constitution, flagrant betrayal of the public trust, graft and corruption and other high crimes. These actions reveal that [she] is unfit for public office and, must, therefore, be removed by impeachment.”

Here are the seven articles of impeachment stated:  

• Contracting an assassin and plotting to murder or assassinate the incumbent President, the First Lady, and Speaker of the House of Representatives, as publicly admitted by her in a live broadcast.

• Supposed misuse of confidential funds appropriated to the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd).

• Alleged bribery of former DepEd officials. 

• Unexplained wealth and failure to disclose all her properties and interests in properties in her Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN).

• Alleged involvement in extrajudicial killings during the “war on drugs” and in the Davao Death Squad (DDS) that the International Criminal Court is investigating.

• By herself and/or in concert with others, alleged commission of acts of destabilization, constituting at least a betrayal of public trust and/or culpable violations of the Constitution, and even the high crimes of sedition and insurrection.

• In the totality of her conduct as Vice President, display of acts constituting a betrayal of public trust, culpable violations of the 1987 Constitution, and graft and corruption.

‘Active threat’

The first article cites the online press conference of the Vice President and her chief of staff Zuleika Lopez on Nov. 23, 2024, where Duterte said she had contracted an unnamed person to kill the President, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and Romualdez in the event that she is killed, “with clear instructions to the said ‘assassin’ to persist until these persons were dead.”

According to the complaint, it is clear that “there is a contract to kill,” and that because of these statements considered as an “active threat,” the Presidential Security Command heightened the security of the President and an inquiry was started by the National Bureau of Investigation.

It notes that the Vice President has not denied or retracted her statements and that her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, “issued a call to the military and police to intervene and prodded them to support [her], and not President Marcos, whom he libelously referred to as a ‘drug addict’ in a clear attempt to prompt a coup d’état against the sitting administration.”

The complaint states that Sara Duterte’s “inflammatory words” along with those acting in concert with her are acts against the 1987 Constitution and are “clearly seditious and constitute an act of terrorism, among other crimes.”

It says she is unfit to discharge the trust upon her in handling public funds not only in her alleged misuse and/or malversation of confidential funds of the OVP and DepEd but also in “her repeated attempts to conceal and suppress relevant information and documents on her fraudulent liquidations” of how these funds were spent.

It says she “wantonly and questionably spent” the P612.5 million confidential funds of the OVP.

It cites the findings of the House committee on good government and public accountability that the confidential expenses of the OVP and DepEd were “nothing more than ghost expenses,” as special disbursing officers of the two agencies testified to having no knowledge of where these confidential funds were spent because these were turned over to another individual per Duterte’s instruction.

“In other words, P612.5 million merely vanished into thin air,” it says.

It cites Duterte’s resistance to any inquiry into the confidential funds, which it says is “suppression, plain and simple” and supposedly intended “to conceal the malversation of public funds.”

On the third article of impeachment, the complaint says the Vice President committed acts of bribery and graft and corruption with the distribution of “monetary gifts to DepEd officials holding procurement-related functions,” as testified to by three education officials. 

The complaint likewise states, from the SALNs Duterte filed during her years in public office, that the growth in her net worth, assets and properties is “grossly disproportionate to her legal income,” and cites unexplained wealth found not to have been disclosed. It cites the testimony of former senator Antonio Trillanes IV that Duterte and her father had over P2 billion in transactions from 2006 to 2015 in several joint accounts.

Killings

The impeachment complaint accuses Duterte of involvement in the extrajudicial killings of the DDS, taking into account the testimony of former police officer Arturo Lascañas, a former member of the DDS who is now under the protection of the International Criminal Court.

Lascañas, in video interviews and recordings, alleged that Duterte as Davao City mayor had approved the DDS killings, “albeit with a directive to bury the victims in mass graves in the Laud Quarry, instead of leaving them in the streets of Davao,” according to the complaint.

The complaint also accuses Duterte of betrayal of public trust in acts by herself and with others, “aimed at and tending to destabilize the government, challenge the authority of the incumbent President, promote blatant disregard for orderly governance, and incite sedition and utter disrespect for public authority, the institutions, rules, and public officials.”

It says Duterte “has repeatedly and maliciously caused political turmoil and instability by sowing division and discord within the government and making public declarations that are tantamount to sedition and rebellion against the Marcos administration.” It cites instances such as her participation in a prayer rally in Davao City on Jan. 28, 2024, where her family, including her father, called on and encouraged the military to take actions that would unseat the President, as well as her statement in a press conference on Oct.18, 2024, that she wanted to cut off the President’s head.

In the last article of impeachment, the complaint notes that Duterte’s “conduct throughout her tenure clearly displays gross faithlessness against public trust and a tyrannical abuse of power that, taken together, showcases her gross unfitness to hold public office and her infidelity to the laws and the 1987 Constitution.”

The complaint adds: “Thus, in the remote event that any or all of the foregoing, taken individually and in isolation from each other and [her] other acts, do not constitute grounds for impeachment, then some or all taken together undoubtedly constitute a culpable violation of the 1987 Constitution, graft and corruption, and a betrayal of public trust that renders [her] unfit to continue in office or to wield the powers and prerogatives of public office.

“Who truly is Vice President Sara Duterte? The Sara Duterte of Nov. 23, 2024, in the live streaming [press conference]—in all of its 48 minutes—is the real Sara Duterte. Res ipsa loquitur.”