Death by legalese

Week two of the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte opened Monday with an odd spectacle: senator-judges and House prosecutors pushing for a faster, more transparent process. The people running the trial are, in effect, complaining about the trial.

They are late to the complaint. Week one gave us a defense counsel objecting because a prosecutor questioned a witness in Waray, senator-judges drifting out of the session hall while a National Bureau of Investigation official testified on alleged death threats against the President, and enough motions to fill a bar review syllabus. Historian Manolo Quezon has called this the most legalistic impeachment proceeding in memory. He was being kind. It is also the dullest, and the dullness is not a cosmetic problem.

Start with the category error. An impeachment court is not a trial court. Only the regular courts can determine the Vice President’s criminal or civil liability for the predicate acts behind the articles. The senator-judges have no authority to do that, and it is improper for them to demand courtroom-grade proof of it. Their question is narrower and, frankly, larger: does her conduct meet the standard of public trust that the Constitution demands of the second highest official in the land?

Senator Alan Peter Cayetano understood this during the Corona trial in 2012: “The Impeachment Court does not simply pass judgment … The Court’s action, being far reaching and precedent-setting, is actually rebuilding a new paradigm of transparency and accountability in public office.” Fourteen years later, Cayetano sits as Senate President while that paradigm shrinks into procedure. On Monday, he was out of the session hall for nearly an hour in the middle of testimony.

None of this means the defense should roll over. Removal and perpetual disqualification are grave penalties, Duterte’s lawyers are entitled to fight, and due process is not a dirty word. But there is a difference between rigor and obstruction, and the presiding officer has the tools to police it — rule on objections briskly, batch the procedural skirmishes, and issue plain-language summaries after every session so a market vendor in Iloilo can follow the case as easily as a litigator in Makati.

The substance deserves that audience. The articles involve confidential funds, unexplained wealth, alleged payments to education officials, and bank transactions flagged by the Anti-Money Laundering Council at more than USD 110 million. The Estrada and Corona trials were flawed, but the public could follow the story — abuse, power, consequence. They became accidental civics lessons. This one risks becoming a private conversation among lawyers.

That is the real danger. When a trial is incomprehensible, citizens disengage, and disengagement is the accused’s best defense. Conviction needs 16 of the 24 senators. Duterte remains the 2028 frontrunner, polling at 51% in late May. Whatever norms this first vice presidential impeachment trial sets will become the template for every trial that follows.

The question before the court has never been which rule of procedure was invoked. It is whether the Vice President remains fit for the office our taxes pay for. The senators should run the trial so the country can hear the answer.