Philippine Congress impeaches Vice President Sara Duterte
- 05 Feb 2025
The lower house in the Philippines impeached Vice President Sara Duterte on Wednesday, accusing her of a wide range of crimes that included plotting to assassinate the president, large-scale corruption and failing to strongly denounce China's aggressive actions against Filipino forces in the disputed South China Sea.
The impeachment stemmed from allegations Duterte misused public funds while vice president and education minister, amassed unexplained wealth, and threatened the lives of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the first lady and the lower house speaker. She has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
She becomes the second most senior elected official in the Philippines to be impeached after former President Joseph Estrada in 2000.
The move is a major setback for the influential Duterte family, whose popularity grew rapidly after Rodrigo Duterte was swept to power in 2016 as a maverick, crime-busting mayor, who as president upended Philippine foreign policy and launched a "war on drugs" that killed thousands of people.
The impeachment comes amid a bitter rift between her and Marcos that has played out in public following the collapse of a powerful alliance between their families that brought them a landslide victory in the 2022 election.
Sara Duterte's brother, Davao Congressman Paolo Duterte, was quick to dismiss the move as politically motivated. "Mark my words: this reckless abuse of power will not end in their favour," he said in a statement.
The impeachment complaint was received by the Senate shortly after 215 of the 306 lower house lawmakers endorsed it amid cheers and applause.
The move by legislators in the House of Representatives, many of them allies of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., deepens a bitter political rift that involved the two highest leaders of one of Asia’s most rambunctious democracies.
Marcos has boosted defence ties with his country’s treaty ally, the United States, while the vice president’s father, Rodrigo Duterte, nurtured cozy relations with China and Russia during his stormy term that ended in 2022.
At least 215 legislators in the lower house signed the impeachment complaint against the vice president, significantly more than the required number to allow the petition to be rapidly transmitted to the Senate, which would serve as a tribunal to try the vice president, House of Representatives Secretary-General Reginald Velasco told a plenary House meeting in the body's last session before a four-month recess.
Among the signatories of the impeachment complaint was the president’s son, Rep. Sandro Marcos, and cousin, House Speaker Martin Romualdez. The petition urged the Senate to shift itself into an impeachment court to try the vice president, "render a judgement of conviction,” remove her from office and ban her from holding public office.
"Sara 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 said of Duterte.
Sara Duterte ran as Marcos’s vice-presidential running mate in 2022 on a campaign battle cry of unity in a deeply divided Southeast Asian country. Both were scions of strongmen long in the crosshairs of human rights groups, but their strong regional bases of support combined to give them landslide victories.
Marcos is the son and namesake of the late dictator, who was ousted in a 1986 pro-democracy uprising. The vice president’s father and Marcos’s predecessor, Duterte, launched a deadly anti-drug crackdown that is being investigated by the International Criminal Court as a possible crime against humanity. The whirlwind political alliance rapidly frayed after their electoral victories.
The impeachment complaint against the vice president, regarded as a possible presidential contender after Marcos’s six-year term ends in 2028, focuses on a death threat that she made against the president, his wife and the House speaker last year, irregularities in the use of her office’s intelligence funds and her failure to stand up to Chinese aggression in the disputed South China Sea.
She said in online news conference on Nov. 23 that she has contracted an assassin to kill Marcos, his wife and Romualdez if she were killed, a threat she warned wasn’t a joke.
She later said that she wasn’t threatening him, but was expressing concern for her own safety. However, her statements set off an investigation and national security concerns.
Allegations of graft and corruption against her also emanated from a monthslong and televised House investigation on the alleged misuse of 612.5 million pesos ($10.5 million) of confidential and intelligence funds received by Duterte’s offices as vice president and education secretary. She has since left the education post after her political differences with Marcos deepened.
She has also been accused of unexplained wealth and failure to declare her wealth as required by the law. She has refused to respond to questions in detail in tense televised hearings last year.
Agencies
