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The impeachment court convened last Monday, July 6, in full judicial costume. Maroon robes, legal jargon, and courtroom ritual filled the hall. It looked like the Supreme Court. And that is wrong.
Judicial power belongs to regular courts under Article VIII. Courts settle rights through strict rules of evidence. They demand technical pleadings, formal objections, and rigid procedure. Criminal guilt requires proof beyond reasonable doubt.
Distinguished from quasi judicial, administrative bodies
Quasi-judicial bodies are administrative agencies acting like courts. Think of the Ombudsman, the Comelec, or labor tribunals. They resolve disputes but relax the technical rules.
Substantial evidence is enough to support their official rulings. Due process there only means notice and fair hearing.
Impeachment sits even farther from the regular courtroom. It is a political process, not a legal one. The Constitution designed it as a people’s tribunal.
Article XI is titled Accountability of Public Officers. Its question is fitness to hold public office. Removal, not punishment, is the only penalty at stake. The impeached official gets basic due process, nothing more.
Yet our senators keep playing Supreme Court. They wear robes and call themselves senator-judges. They held a technical pretrial worthy of criminal litigation. They elected Senator Chiz Escudero, a lawyer, as presiding officer. The stated reason: only lawyers understand complicated court procedure.
For the record, so far, Senator Escudero is doing a great job. In the context of a judicial process, it was right that he was chosen presiding officer in place of the Senate President Win Gatchalian.
In any case, that reasoning behind the choice of a presiding officer exposes the whole constitutional distortion. If impeachment were truly political, any senator could preside. Judicializing the trial buries truth under piles of technicality.
The first hearings
The first two hearing days proved the point.
Day 1 opened exactly like a criminal arraignment. The prosecution even moved to arraign the Vice President. Both panels spoke the borrowed language of criminal courts.
Chief defense counsel Sheila Sison commanded the opening day. Her opening statement invoked history and 32 million voters. She summoned “never forget,” a Martial Law era mantra. She demanded presumption of innocence and acquittal upon reasonable doubt. It was eloquent, but it was criminal-court eloquence.
Her combativeness showed even before the opening statements. She blocked the arraignment and the articles’ full reading. She called the reading a waste of judicial time.
Let this column be clear about one thing. Sison was brilliantly and aggressively doing her job. A fierce litigator must exploit every available technical opening. Blame the forum the senators built, not the advocate.
Day 2 descended into pure courtroom warfare. Defense counsel Carlo Narvasa objected at nearly every step. He moved to disqualify the prosecution’s very first witness. He fought authentication, certifications, and even a flash drive. He demanded the full two-hour video for proper context.
His duel with private prosecutor Amando Ligutan turned testy. “Hold your horses,” Ligutan snapped during one early interruption. Later he told the objecting Narvasa to relax.
I know both Ligutan and Narvasa. The former is my colleague in the UP Law faculty. He is brilliant and is now a social media darling. The latter was my student in Ateneo Law School, a worthy descendant of his grandfather Chief Justice Andres Narvasa. Both did their jobs well.
The presiding officer himself completed the judicial picture. Escudero ruled on motions by citing Enrile versus Sandiganbayan. He parsed pretrial briefs like a seasoned trial magistrate. A two-minute video took two hours to play.
Even the senator-judges caught the courtroom fever quickly. Motions to strike flew across the plenary floor. Colleagues debated hearsay and relevance like veteran trial lawyers. Again, all the counsels were only doing their duty. But an impeachment court should breathe entirely different air.
Judicial fever on high alert
The watching public noticed and reacted with online jokes. Netizens asked who was counting Narvasa’s endless objections. Spectacle replaced substance on the nation’s television screens.
The judicial fever has now spread to Padre Faura. Lawyer Israelito Torreon and allies petitioned the Supreme Court. They question Escudero’s election as the trial’s presiding officer. They want the entire trial halted by injunction.
Call this petition what it truly is: a nuisance. The Constitution names a presiding officer only for presidents. Everything else falls under the Senate’s sole trial power. The Supreme Court should dismiss the petition outright. Entertaining it would invite endless litigation over every ruling.
Imagine petitions filed after every objection gets overruled. Trial by the Senate would become trial by certiorari. Torreon’s group has made such filings its specialty.
The stakes are far higher than mere procedure. The nation deserves clear answers about funds and threats. Every sustained technicality delays that public reckoning. Filipinos tuned in for truth, not for lawyer theater.
We have seen this movie in past trials. The Estrada trial collapsed over one sealed envelope. The Corona trial nearly drowned in objections and delays.
Technicality gave cover, and the streets rendered final judgment. Legalism has never saved a Philippine impeachment from politics.
An administrative tribunal decides careers with relaxed, practical rules. Our impeachment court is stricter than those tribunals. The least judicial body has become the most judicial.
What needs to be done
The correction is simple and starts with the symbols. Shed the borrowed robes and drop the judge title. Senators are politicians, and that is precisely the design. Their conscience and constituents supply the higher law.
Even the name “impeachment court” is itself inappropriate. No separate court exists anywhere in the Constitution. There is only the Senate conducting an impeachment trial.
Words shape conduct, and “court” invites courtroom behavior. Correct the label and the mindset may follow.
Maybe, its no longer realistic to expect the Senate to change symbols and nomenclature, but things can still be done to make the process better.
The most important is simplify the rules and admit relevant evidence liberally. Adopt substantial evidence, never proof beyond reasonable doubt. Empower the chair to curb serial dilatory objections.
Take the long and winding arguments on the admissibility and veracity of the video of VP Duterte’s threats against President Marcos, his wife Lisa Araneta Marcos, and former Speaker Martin Romualdez. Why did the Senate have to do that when we all saw the video anyway?
The only bone of contention is the context and meaning of the VP’s threats. That can be reserved for the closing arguments.
Impeachment is democracy’s way of demanding an accounting. It answers to the people, not the Rules of Court. Dismiss the nuisance suits and let the trial breathe. The Senate should correct course before form swallows substance.
Impeachment borrows its legitimacy directly from the sovereign people. Citizens must watch, understand, debate, and pressure their senators. Public opinion, not jurisprudence, is the real jury. Judicialized proceedings raise a wall of Latin and technicality. A verdict the people cannot follow cannot bear their name. – Rappler.com
