Article IV of the Articles of Impeachment — the provision covering alleged grave threats against the country’s top officials — was at the center of a tense stretch of the proceedings when defense lawyer Carlo Joaquin Narvasa broke in repeatedly to object as prosecutors tried to build their case on the second day of Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial on Tuesday.
Watching the exchange unfold, lawyer Barry Gutierrez turned to social media with a pointed jab at Duterte’s legal team. Posting on X, he wrote: “I wonder if someone is getting paid on a ‘per objection’ basis? 😉 #VPonTrial”
The interruptions from Narvasa came while House prosecution counsel Amando Ligutan was questioning the day’s witness about a 2024 recording in which Duterte spoke of an assassin and the killing of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and former House Speaker Martin Romualdez should she herself be killed. Duterte’s camp has argued the remark was constitutionally protected speech rather than an actual plot, maintaining in its earlier reply to the Senate that no evidence shows she ever hired anyone to carry out a killing.
Narvasa is a senior associate at Fortun, Narvasa and Salazar, the firm supplying most of the 16-member panel defending the Vice President under lead counsel Sheila Sison. His objections clustered around the prosecution’s effort to introduce material tied to the grave threats allegation, one of four articles the Senate is weighing.
The prosecution has said it chose to open with Article IV because the underlying video is the charge most easily grasped by both the senator-judges and the public, much of which has already watched the footage circulate online. Prosecutors have set aside 11 trial days to argue the grave threats count before moving on to the remaining articles covering confidential funds, bribery, and unexplained wealth.
Conviction on any article would require the votes of at least 16 of the senator-judges and could strip Duterte of her office while barring her permanently from public service — a stake sharpened by her declared bid for the presidency in 2028.
