Such is the “high stakes” exercise this impeachment “trial” of Vice President Sara Duterte is made out to be. Yet its entire outcome — the anticipated “verdict” of this “trial” a long way down the track (if it ever does transpire) — is hinged on the quality of judgment to be passed by the so-called “senator-judges” who will be presiding over it.
Here’s the thing, though. There is only one measure that qualifies judgment, and that is fairness. How fair then do we expect the Philippine Senate to be when it takes the role of “impeachment court” in this circus? For an answer to that, we defer to Inquirer columnist Jake Maderazo who, in his recent piece, described the only legal impeachment process in the Philippines as one that clearly lacks “three essential elements” to qualify it as a sound arbiter of fairness;
[…] namely an impartial adjudicator which is the Senate, second, independent fact-finding from pre-determined outcomes and third, adherence to procedural rules what will apply equally to all parties.
The Senate, after all, is a chamber the members of which are elected to office by popular vote. As such, the only thing that qualifies them for membership in this institution and, now, the role they take as “judges” is nothing other than popularity. The Senate, as such, is unqualified to judge by design. And who and what baked this unfair design into this system? Why none other than the architects and implementors of the 1987 Yellowtard Constitution, who else? That was a topic in a previous article so no need to dwell on this embedded architecture of Philippine governance failure today lest we digress.
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The real point here is in how Filipinos and their eminent “thought leaders” routinely miss the entire point in their decades-long chattering over the who’s-who and what’s-what of one impeachment clown show after the other, most recent of which is this one. This wholesale point-missing is evident in Maderazo’s above-quoted piece itself where, following the breathtaking bit of insight he delivers above, issues the following unfortunate follow-through…
[…] the new Senate majority headed by [Senate President] Alan Peter Cayetano and others is not merely politically aligned with VP Duterte—they are openly and explicitly so. This is not subtle partisanship; this is “declared bias”.
Dude, regardless of who the “majority” in the Senate is and who their leader is, the Senate can never be a fair chamber of judges. The who’s don’t matter. It’s what the Senate is that is the real issue here — an institution that is categorically unqualified to judge because its members are winners of a mere popularity contest.
Maderazo further elaborates…
When some senator-judges announce in advance that they will rule in favor of the defendant, we do not call this a trial. We call this as a “show trial-if it proceeds at all”. We call it a “travesty of justice”-if it pretends legitimacy. And lastly, we call it a “kangaroo court” – if there is general absence of procedural fairness and the outcome of the trial or hearing is predetermined.
Again, dude, to suggest that the Senate is a “kangaroo court” because Cayetano is its president and its majority are a bunch of Dutertards is missing the point. The Senate is a kangaroo court whenever it is called to “judge” impeachment cases regardless of who its leader and majority is. There is no cause-and-effect here between a Cayetano senate presidency and this impeachment “trial” being unfair. The cause-and-effect relationship here is between the nature of the Senate (as determined by the 1987 Yellowtard Constitution) and the fairness of its judgment. It is what the Senate is (not who it is) that pre-determines the outcome of Sara Duterte’s trial (and all “impeachment trials” that came before it and what may come after this spectacle).
Indeed, do recall how, many years ago, “an admired Filipino economist, based in New York, surveyed the economic situation here and dolefully intoned: ‘What ails the country is that Philippine society is intellectually bankrupt.’ Take, for instance, the national debates, she pointed out”…
“They are droll and unintelligent, focused on the trivial or the irrelevant.” When the issues are of some significance, it’s the wrong arguments that prevail, the wrong side wins. Logic and common sense take the backseat to political arguments and the views of the poorly-educated. There seems to be some bases for her disenchantment.
Some things in the Philippines never change: the quality of her political “debate” and, yes, her retarded Constitution that continues to frame this “debate”. The characters, to be fair, do change as there are many now out there social-media-enabled and no longer encumbered by the any requirement to write, speak, or think well to engage with a big voice in all the blathering we see and hear nowadays.
- How can the Philippine Senate even be considered qualified to judge to begin with when its members are winners of a mere popularity contest? - May 19, 2026
- SO WHAT if Vice President Sara Duterte is impeached or not? - May 18, 2026
- Al Jazeera @AJEnglish posts misleading video in report on arrest of Philippine Senator Ronald ‘Bato’ dela Rosa - May 14, 2026