The chamber tasked with prosecuting Vice President Sara Duterte signaled its readiness this week, with a key House figure declaring that the senators set to weigh the case can be counted on to honor their constitutional obligations.
Rep. Gerville Luistro of Batangas, who chairs the House Committee on Justice, addressed reporters Monday and drew a firm line between the senator-judges’ personal legal entanglements and the trial itself. Asked directly whether the cases hanging over certain senators might compromise the proceedings, she rejected any such link. “Well, for me, I do not consider those cases against the senator judges as related in any way to this impeachment proceeding. Iba ‘yun. Those are separate and distinct from this impeachment process,” she said.
That separation, in her view, extends to how each senator should be regarded going into the trial. Luistro maintained that controversy does not strip anyone of their legal standing. “And as I have said, they have constitutional right to be presumed innocent until the contrary is proved,” she said. “So ‘yung aming pagkilala sa mga senator-judges, whether or not they have pending cases, should be the same.”
She was equally precise about where the prosecution’s work ends and the Senate’s begins. The threshold for removing the Vice President is no secret, she acknowledged, but securing it is not something the House controls. “Well, of course, alam natin ‘yun na 16 ang kailangan to get a conviction,” Luistro said. “But that is beyond our duty already. As far as we are concerned, our constitutional duty is to present evidence.” The panel’s mandate, she added, stops at laying out the case: “And it is for the senator judges to decide whether to acquit or to convict.”
Luistro returned more than once to the idea that the public will be watching closely, and that scrutiny binds everyone in the room. “But let us remind the public, we are aware that the sovereign Filipino people will be keenly observing what will be happening in this impeachment trial,” she said. The accountability, she stressed, runs in both directions. “And for us in the prosecution, we are aware that we are likewise responsible to the Filipino people in the same way that the senator judges will be responsible with regards to the decision that they will be making to this impeachment trial.”
Whatever outcome emerges should rest on what is shown in court, she argued — even an acquittal, if the evidence warrants it, would register with a public invested in the result. “If the evidence is strong and the decision is acquittal, I think the Filipino people will be minding that because they are interested as well in this impeachment trial,” she said.
For now, the prosecution’s preparations continue without a fixed calendar. Luistro said her panel is still waiting on the Senate impeachment court to formally communicate when pre-trial activities and the trial proper will get underway.
