CIVIL society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition have filed impeachment complaints against Vice-President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the country’s Supreme Court last year.
Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally President Ferdinand Marcos.
The filings yesterday come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiralling scandal over bogus flood control projects.
Under the Philippine constitution, an impeachment by the House triggers a Senate trial, where a guilty verdict means expulsion from office and a lifetime ban on political service.
Duterte, daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, is widely considered a potential presidential candidate in 2028.
“It’s about time that VP Sara must be held accountable,” Representative Leila de Lima, who endorsed one of the fresh complaints, said yesterday.
“The complaint basically... raises the same grounds as the previous complaint, just much condensed and streamlined.”
Key to both filings yesterday are allegations surrounding about US$10mil in unexplained spending while Duterte was education secretary.
Duterte was successfully impeached by the House last year on similar charges brought by a group backed by de Lima and other lawmakers.
In addition to questions over her spending, that complaint alleged that she had made an assassination threat against the president during a late-night press briefing, charges she has denied.
An abortive Senate trial that followed saw the senior body kick the case back to the House while questioning its constitutionality.
The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the impeachment was a violation of a constitutional rule against multiple complaints being filed in the same year.
The court upheld its ruling last week.
In a statement, lawyers for the vice-president said they were confident the accusations would be proven baseless.
Marcos is separately facing impeachment complaints accusing him of accusing him of systematically bilking taxpayers out of billions of dollars for bogus flood-control projects.
Rage over so-called ghost infrastructure projects has been building for months in the archipelago country of 116 million, where entire towns were buried in floodwaters driven by powerful typhoons in the past year.
The House justice committee began hearings over the Marcos complaints yesterday.
Outside, a group of about 100 protesters gathered by the left-wing Makabayan bloc held aloft banners calling for the ouster of both Marcos and Duterte.
“We are protesting... to remind the lawmakers that their loyalty should be to the people, not to their political patron, not to their political dynasty, not to the president,” Raymond Palatino, 46, said. — AFP
