Whether Vice President Sara Duterte’s public threats amount to an impeachable act — rather than a criminal one — has become the pivot of her Senate trial, and it took a question from a longtime political opponent of the Dutertes to force it into the open.
Salvador Panelo, a lawyer who served as spokesperson to former President Rodrigo Duterte, said Senator Risa Hontiveros was correct to press that point despite his own frequent disagreements with her. “Binabanatan nila si [Risa] Hontiveros. I disagree with her with so many things. Pero tama yung tanong niya,” Panelo said.
The question at issue came during Hontiveros’ examination of National Bureau of Investigation senior agent John Mark Calilung, who told the impeachment court about the agency’s open-source review of Duterte’s public remarks against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife, and former House Speaker Martin Romualdez. Turning from the witness to the House prosecutors, Hontiveros said nothing placed before the court showed the Vice President had in fact engaged anyone to carry out a killing, and asked why the statements alone were impeachable.
House prosecutor Armando Virgil Ligutan replied that the panel was working to establish intent at that stage rather than a completed contract, and cited Rule 130, Section 35 of the Rules of Court, which allows a person’s statements to be admitted as evidence of intent, knowledge, identity, plan, or system. Ligutan told the court the prosecution’s position is that Duterte should be removed for contracting an assassin to kill the President, and he conceded her statements alone do not amount to complete proof of that.
The exchange drew a defense objection. Presiding officer Francis “Chiz” Escudero allowed Ligutan to finish and held his ruling in reserve, later telling both sides that Hontiveros had reached the ultimate question the court itself must answer.
Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian, in a July 9 interview on DZMM reported by Philstar.com, said the senator’s line of inquiry was sound but came earlier in the sequence than trial procedure contemplates, since evidence and testimony must first be formally laid down before the chamber rules on them. He described the opening week as an adjustment period for the senator-judges, prosecutors, and defense counsel, and noted that senators in the trials of Joseph Estrada and Renato Corona were similarly given wide room to question.
Panelo’s assessment marks a shift from his earlier posture toward the senator. In April, he predicted that Hontiveros, Vicente Sotto III, Panfilo Lacson, and Francis Pangilinan would all vote to convict once the case reached the Senate — a claim Lacson rejected outright, saying the senator-judges would be guided by the evidence and that no one was authorized to speak for him.
