Drilon to SC: Let Congress handle impeachment

By Rjay Zuriaga Castor

Former Senate President Franklin Drilon urged the Supreme Court (SC) to allow Congress to proceed with its constitutional mandate in the impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte.

Duterte recently elevated her impeachment case to the High Court, with her legal team filing a 58-page petition for certiorari seeking a temporary restraining order to halt the ongoing hearings before the House Committee on Justice.

The petition cited constitutional limits, including the one-year bar reset, and alleged due process flaws in the House’s handling of the complaint.

Drilon, however, appealed to the SC to refrain from intervening at this stage and instead allow the legislative branch to carry out its role.

“What I appeal to the SC is to give the Congress a chance to perform their work, to perform their job […] and let the people judge whether the Congress is correct,” he said.

Drilon served as a senator-judge during the impeachment trials of then-President Joseph Estrada in 2001 and former Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012.

He stressed that the impeachment process is inherently a political exercise with quasi-judicial characteristics.

He explained that, unlike courts that strictly rule on legal issues, Congress is composed of elected officials who are ultimately accountable to the public.

“This is basically a political exercise. The impeachment is basically a quasal-judicial […] it is accepted that the impeachment proceeding is not a legal proceeding but a quasi-judicial proceeding,” he said.

“So I ask the court, allow Congress to do its job because this is not the end of the line in so far as the principles are concerned. Let them exercise what is their prerogative,” he added.

He added that lawmakers are expected to exercise judgment not only based on legal standards but also on their responsibility to their constituents.

“The judge on the court would decide purely on legal issues but you do not expect Congress and the Senate to follow the same standard because they are not always in the first place and that is how it was designed,” he said.

“You are judged by the people who are elected representatives not steep in law but are responsible to their constituents, as against the judge who would decide issues simply on basis of what is written in our statutes,” he stressed.