Delayed, diluted, denied?

By Herman M. Lagon

The chalkboard of Philippine democracy has once again been scratched with uncertainty, this time by a unanimous ruling from the highest court in the land. I am no lawyer. I did not graduate from UP or Ateneo Law or train under luminaries of the bench. My legal knowledge comes piecemeal—required courses in logic, taxation, and constitution during engineering school, a crash course in business law in MBA, an appreciation of education policies from years in school leadership, and a crash dive into special, criminal, and administrative codes as a beat reporter trying to survive tight editorial deadlines. I cannot cite legal provisions from memory, but like many Filipinos, I know injustice when I see one. That, too, is a form of wisdom—not codified, but lived.

When the Supreme Court struck down the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte, it was like watching a referee step into the court mid-game, confiscate the ball, and then say the rules were never clear to begin with. The irony is difficult to ignore. The same justices who once claimed that “initiation” of impeachment begins upon referral to the justice committee have now reversed themselves, retroactively at that. The House followed what it believed was the “law of the land,” only to be told—surprise—that the rules had been quietly revised midstream. You do not need a law degree to sense something askew when fairness seems like an afterthought.

Let me be clear: I do not question the power of the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution. It is their mandate. And in a democracy, we are bound to respect judicial decisions, even those we may disagree with. But respecting the court is different from worshipping it. Even the framers of our Constitution designed a system of checks and balances precisely because no single branch, not even the judiciary, holds the monopoly on truth. If the Senate is the trial court of impeachment, and the House the initiator, what happens now that the SC has practically inserted itself as the gatekeeper of both? Have we quietly rewritten the charter without saying so?

The late Jesuit Father Joaquin Bernas, one of the framers of our Constitution, once cautioned against the judiciary overreaching into matters best left to the political branches. The impeachment process, he argued, was never meant to be a legalistic exercise governed by procedural gymnastics. It was, above all, a political remedy for political abuse. By placing new and stringent procedural demands—evidentiary attachments, prior notice to the accused, even responses before the Senate could open the trial—the Court has essentially transformed impeachment into a quasi-criminal prosecution. And yet, oddly, the Vice President remains uncharged before any proper court. Justice delayed. Justice diluted.

People often say the law must evolve with the times. That is true. But evolving must not mean evading. In this case, the danger lies not just in the ruling itself, but in the precedent it sets: that an impeachable official can escape accountability for a year simply because three unacted complaints were filed prior—even if they were deliberately ignored. The Constitution meant the one-year bar rule to protect public officials from harassment, not from scrutiny. What happened here is a legal loophole turned into a fortress.

Eight out of ten Filipinos, according to OCTA Research, wanted the impeachment trial to proceed. That is not just noise. That is the national conscience. From sari-sari store banters to teacher lounges, from urban offices to barangay halls, from coffee shops to town markets, the common question was simple: Kung walang tinatago, bakit ayaw magpaliwanag? The ruling may have silenced the gavel, but it amplified public doubt. When 215 House representatives—more than two-thirds—vote to impeach, it means the issue is not imagined. There was smoke. Yet the fire was extinguished before we even got to see the blaze.

There is no comfort in the “technicalities” being weaponized to dismiss what should have been the most open, scrutinized, and defining political trial since the post-EDSA era. Imagine what that trial could have meant. The public would have finally witnessed, through livestreams and unedited footages, a reckoning of how public funds were allocated for confidential expenses, how abuse of power was rationalized as governance, how silence was bought and dissent criminalized. The House hearings alone could have served as a classroom on accountability for millions of Filipinos, especially the youth. We have just lost an invaluable teaching moment.

As an educator, I often tell my students that becoming a professional is not about always being right—it is about being accountable when you are wrong. That is a lesson some of our public officials refuse to learn. The public can sense when people in power hide behind due process but never submit to it in spirit. The SC ruling may claim no guilt or innocence was decided. But to the Filipino watching from a cramped jeepney or a WiFi-sparse classroom, the message it sends is clear: the powerful get pre-trial dismissals; the powerless get pre-dawn raids.

To say the country lost is both accurate and incomplete. It is not just about this year’s failed trial. The real casualty is institutional trust. What happens next time an impeachable official is accused? How does the House proceed, knowing the bar now includes nine new hurdles, none of which were ever debated in any constitutional convention? Former Chief Justice Carpio and Commissioner Christian Monsod were not merely disagreeing with the decision—they were mourning the lost spirit of the Constitution. For a judiciary that prides itself on restraint, this was judicial engineering bordering on overdesign.

Still, I am not without hope. The House may refile next year, this time with sharpened tools and broader public backing. The Senate, if it still wants to redeem itself from its disappointing passivity, can act with more moral clarity. The public, if the recent survey is any sign, has not forgotten. Truth, when suppressed, does not vanish. It gathers strength. It waits. It returns.

In the meantime, let us mark who stood where. History has a way of reshuffling reputations. Senators who tiptoed around principle will soon face reelection. Lawmakers who voted with conscience will be remembered not just by analysts, but by families still waiting for their roads, their teachers, their doctors—who know that every peso lost to corruption is a peso taken from real people’s lives. Our children, after all, are not raised by confidentiality funds but by classrooms built with public trust.

There is an old saying attributed to Ignatian pedagogy: the truth has legs. It will walk. It will catch up. No matter how heavy the robes, how thick the legalese, how tall the bench—truth, in time, finds its way back to the light. This ruling may have stopped a trial, but it cannot stop a nation from remembering. Not this time. Not again.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.