The China Mail - Philippine lawmakers vote to impeach VP Sara Duterte

The articles of impeachment accuse the daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte of graft, corruption, bribery and an alleged assassination plot against former ally President Ferdinand Marcos.

Under the Philippine constitution, a guilty verdict in the Senate would see Duterte removed from office and barred from elected office for life.

"This is no longer just about politics. This is about conscience, duty and the future of our nation," Representative Bienvenido Abante said immediately following the vote.

"This is not about 2028, this is not about political alliances, this is about whether we still believe that no one is above the law."

Lawmakers voted by a margin of 255 to 26 -- with nine abstentions -- to impeach.

The articles focus on misappropriation of public funds, unexplained assets, bribery of public officials, and an alleged death threat against Marcos and other family members.

The threat against Marcos stemmed from a late-night press briefing in which Duterte claimed to have hired an assassin to kill the president should he have her cut down first.

She later said her comments had been misinterpreted.

In a statement released after Monday's vote, Duterte's defence counsel said the burden of proof now lay with her accusers.

"We are fully prepared to defend the Vice President before the Senate sitting as an Impeachment Court," the statement said.

- Second impeachment, new Senate -

Duterte and Marcos have been engaged in a high-stakes political brawl that erupted within weeks of their 2022 presidential election victory, when the vice president was denied her desired defence portfolio and instead named education secretary.

The feud exploded into open warfare in 2025 with her first impeachment and the subsequent arrest and transfer of her father to face charges at the International Criminal Court at the Hague tied to his deadly drug war.

This marks the second time the vice president has been impeached on mostly the same charges.

The Senate trial that followed her first impeachment saw senators don robes and convene a court on live television only to send the case back to the House, a decision one lawmaker called a "functional dismissal".

The upper chamber is now even more solidly stacked in Duterte's favour after a slate of candidates loyal to her outperformed expectations in May 2025's mid-term elections, winning five of 12 open seats.

On Monday, as the House impeachment vote got underway, longtime ally Senator Alan Peter Cayetano was voted in as the new Senate president in an election that had not been tipped beforehand.

Dennis Coronacion, chair of the political science department at Manila's University of Santo Tomas, told AFP before Cayetano's election he believed an acquittal was "highly possible" given the Senate's new makeup.

However, the impeachment process and presentation of evidence against her were likely to take a toll on Duterte's presidential hopes, all the same, Coronacion said.

"I'm expecting that by the next survey cycle, we'll see the change in the public perception about the vice president. Filipinos really hate corruption," he said, noting the vice president had declined to appear and defend herself at House committee meetings.

D.Pan--ThChM