The verdict the Senate cannot deliver

Five days into the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, the loudest complaint is boredom. Hours spent authenticating a video the whole country watched in November 2024. An NBI agent pressed repeatedly on whether the recording was generated by artificial intelligence, which he said it was not. Objections, manifestations, recesses.

The tedium deserves a defense. Rules of evidence exist to protect every respondent, including one named Duterte, and the presumption of innocence does not bend for unpopular officials. Dean Jose Mari Tirol put it plainly in these pages: this is a trial, not a telenovela. Shortcuts taken against this Vice President will be available against the next one, who may be somebody’s favorite.

But some of the slog is self-inflicted. Former Senate President Franklin Drilon has pointed out that neither camp bothered to stipulate on facts nobody disputes, starting with a video the defense itself played portions of during cross-examination. A recording cannot be challenged as inauthentic in the morning and mined for exculpatory material in the afternoon without inviting the obvious conclusion. Both panels own the wasted hours, and with the prosecution eyeing 25 witnesses, the waste compounds.

The larger confusion is about what kind of proceeding this is. It is not a grave threats prosecution. Whether the Vice President genuinely meant her Nov. 23, 2024 statements about contracting an assassin is, as Drilon argues, immaterial. The question is whether the second-highest official of the land may speak that way and remain fit for the office. The suggestion that she spoke under extreme stress answers that question more candidly than the defense intends. Composure under pressure is not an optional feature of the vice presidency.

And whatever the senator-judges decide, another court is in session. Duterte remains the most trusted top official in the country, with a net satisfaction rating of +29 in the March Social Weather Stations round and +36 here in the Visayas. Yet Pulse Asia found distrust in her rose from 16 percent to 26 percent in a year, with alleged corruption the single most cited reason. The numbers say the public has not made up its mind. They also say it is watching.

That is the real stake. Sixteen votes convict. But an acquittal read as a technicality, or a conviction read as a 2028 maneuver, will cost the Senate more than it costs Duterte, who declared her presidential run in February and still leads the early surveys. Trust in institutions is the thing actually on trial.

The fixes are unglamorous. Stipulate what is undisputed. Let the presiding officer compress repetitive examination. And when the verdict comes, each senator should explain the vote in plain language, on the record, at home in their own region, not in a ready-made press release. The cartoon on this page shows the public marking its own ballot: trusted or not trusted. That ballot has no rules of evidence, and no appeal.