Philippines: Why impeachment is now an ‘impossible dream’

Manila: Once imagined as the Constitution’s sharpest safeguard against abuse by top officials, impeachment now risks becoming a ritual without consequence — a ceremony performed, but never completed.

A public official facing impeachment raps no longer needs to defeat the charge on its merits. 

In the Philippines, impeachment can now be easily defeated, through the Supreme Court on a "filing" technicality, instead of the Senate, as clearly mandated by the 1987 Constitution.

The simple, cold strategy: overwhelm the process itself.

It's like someone preparing to get a photograph at a studio, then coming out with 10 cups of latte, and no photo.

The country's top legal minds are now making full use of this seemingly innocuous technicality, with the effect of turning impeachment complaints into a farce.

How?

File — or allow the filing of — multiple impeachment complaints in rapid succession.

The simple idea: Let the lower house of the Philippine Congress (House of Representatives) drown in paper.

It's about procedure choking substance.

This gambit sits at the heart of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the petition for certiorari filed by Vice President Sara Duterte's legal team.

It highlights the fault lines of impeachment in practice. 

The House of Representatives did impeach her on February 5, 2025, when 215 members signed the impeachment complaint on charges that include corruption, plotting to assassinate President Bongbong Marcos, involvement in extrajudicial killings and incitement to insurrection and public disorder.

Yet the Senate never tried the case. The process is stalled in the space between accusation and judgment.

Under the 1987 Philippine Constitution, impeachment is meant to be both rare and solemn.

Article XI provides that the President, Vice President, members of the Supreme Court, constitutional commissions, and the Ombudsman may be impeached for the following offences:

The House of Representatives holds the exclusive power to initiate impeachment. 

The Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, holds the exclusive power to try and decide. 

Crucially, the Constitution imposes a safeguard against abuse: no impeachment proceedings shall be initiated against the same official more than once within a period of one year.

That same Constitutional safeguard now threatens the process. This very safeguard — designed to protect stability — is now being exploited to hollow out the process.

When impeachment complaints are filed in quick succession, the one-year bar is triggered, and the clock starts running. 

The Senate, bound by timing and procedure, may never reach trial. 

The constitutional promise of accountability dissolves into a technicality.

What remains is a troubling inversion: impeachment survives on paper, but not in effect. 

The House may impeach, but the Senate may never judge. Guilt or innocence is left undecided.

It gets suspended in constitutional limbo, where accountability quietly withers.

The reason: The Supreme Court’s strict interpretation of the so-called one-case-one-year constitutional limit.

This has created a major procedural barrier that has effectively turned the process of impeachment as a matter of legal strategy, instead of the pursuit of truth and justice.

This, critics say, paralyses the solemn intent of the Constitution to bestow upon Congress a mechanism for accountability when top officials make egregious, impeachable offences.

While the Supreme Court acts as the final arbiter of Constitutional disputes, reviewing impeachment processes for compliance with due process and textual provisions, the top court has itself become a suppressor of the process of self-cleansing in government. 

In the case of Vice President Sara Duterte, the SC intervened via a petition for certiorari (an order by which a higher court reviews a decision, ruling, or action of a lower court, tribunal, or administrative agency) filed by her legal team in February 2025 after the House transmitted articles to the Senate.

Specifically, her legal team sought to block the fourth impeachment complaint against her, arguing it violated the Constitution.

The SC declared the articles “unconstitutional” en banc — first in July 2025, then unanimously denying reconsideration on January 28, 2026. 

In effect, this has invalidated the Senate’s jurisdiction, despite Congress's exclusive initiation powers under the Constitution.

The Court ruled that Duterte's first three complaints (filed within three months of each other) triggered this “one-year bar.”

The court ruled that “archiving” signified initiation. The fourth complaint violated this, regardless of House discretion on timing.

The Court junked the case citing multiple technical flaws: 

Penned by Justice Leonen, it stressed “the end does not justify the means”, voiding the process without absolving Duterte. This makes refiling only possible post-February 2026. 

Certiorari (originally from Latin “to be informed), is a legal term that refers to an "extraordinary writ" issued by a higher court — typically the Supreme Court — to review and annul decisions, orders, or actions of lower courts, tribunals, boards, or officers exercising judicial or quasi-judicial functions.

Under Rule 65, Section 1 of the Philippine Rules of Court, a petition for certiorari seeks to nullify acts done without or in excess of jurisdiction (or with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction) when no appeal or other plain, speedy remedy exists.

It’s not an appeal; rather, it is a supervisory remedy.

More importantly, it is designed to keep inferior bodies within legal bounds — originally from Latin “to be informed”, commanding records to be sent up for review. 

There's one problem: Under the same Constitution, the legislature (House and Senate) are not inferior to the judiciary (including the Supreme Court). They are "co-equal" branches, as part of a three-branch system (with the Executive).

These three branches operate under the principle of separation of powers, where the Legislative makes laws, the Judiciary interprets them, and all remain subordinate to the Constitution. 

In the context of impeachment case against VP Sara Duterte, her lawyers used it to challenge the House’s process as “jurisdictionally flawed”.

Now multiple impeachment cases had been filed against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, too, in quick succession.

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On January 19, a Congressman filed the first impeachment complaint against Marcos Jr in 14‑page petition that cited six alleged grounds:

Several lawmakers have publicly dismissed the complaint as weak and easily dismissible.

The Makabayan bloc also filed its impeachment petition, adding that Makabayan the BBM Parametric Formula effectively provided the framework for alleged kickbacks. The House Committee on Justice junked both petitions last week for being insufficient (either in "form", or "substance").

If the court ruling on VP Duterte sets a legal precedent, future impeachment cases could be annulled for the same reason: by flooding Congress with serial complaints to trigger the one-year bar, thus shielding officials via technicality, discarding any real issues contained in the complaints. 

Critics like Senate President Tito Sotto, Rep Leila De Lima, and the Makabayan bloc warn of “judicial overreach” enabling allies to sabotage via sham filings.

This, in effect, deters legitimate probes amid Marcos-Duterte tensions. 

Without Charter change, powerful figures could exploit this precedent, rendering impeachment unusable, unless the Charter's specific provision is changed.

Impeachment, once envisioned as the people’s ultimate check on power, begins to resemble a mirage — always visible, never reachable. 

The question lingers, unanswered and uneasy: Has impeachment in the Philippines become an impossible dream — not because it is forbidden, but because it can now be neutralised without ever being fought?