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MANILA, Philippines — Representative-elect Leila de Lima (ML Party-list) slammed the Senate's decision to remand the articles of impeachment against Vice President Sara Duterte to the House, calling it a blatant disregard of the Constitution.
“Now, the Senate as [an] impeachment court has just lit the Constitution aflame. All the proceedings and motions taken in the so-called impeachment court are without legal basis,” she said in a video statement on Wednesday, June 11.
The Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, voted 18-5 to grant the motion of Senators Alan Peter Cayetano and Bato dela Rosa to “return” the verified impeachment complaint to the House.
The unprecedented move seeks clarification and certification that the complaint does not violate the Constitution.
RELATED: Uncertainty as Senate votes to return Sara Duterte's impeachment case to House
“Harap harapan na tayo niloloko. Kakaibang korte ito — korte ng kababalaghan,” De Lima said. (They're deceiving us right to our faces. This is a bizarre court — a court of absurdities.)
“We have just witnessed proceedings without boundaries while the Constitution, the law and rules burn,” she added.
No remanding in the rules
De Lima, set to join the next Congress as a House prosecutor in the impeachment trial, said the approved motion sends the message that lawyers are irrelevant when the law itself is being disregarded.
"Hindi na kinailangan ang abogado dito dahil wala na sa batas ang pinagusapan. Kaya tuloy sana sa palengke na lang finile ang impeachment complaint. At least doon may nagtitinda ng totoo," she said.
(Lawyers are not needed here because the law wasn’t part of the discussion anymore. They might as well have filed the impeachment complaint in the market—at least there, people deal in truth.)
She accused Senate President Chiz Escudero of violating the Constitution as early as February, when the articles of impeachment were first transmitted.
For one, she said Escudero failed to act “forthwith” on the complaint endorsed by 215 House members — well over the one-third threshold.
She also criticized him for allowing Senator Dela Rosa’s motion to dismiss to be entertained and later revised to appear as a mere motion to “remand,” as these are not specified in the rules of impeachment or the Constitution.
Escudero, however, has since been contending that he is merely following precedents of impeachment proceedings after being criticized for delaying Duterte's trial. But the motion to remand? It has not been done before.
"Where is it in the rules of impeachment that a senator-judge can move for dismissal?" De Lima asked. "Where is it written that an impeachment court can remand the complaint to the House as a nice way of dismissing it?"
Senator-judges acting as defendant's lawyers
At the same time, De Lima said that in any court of law, a judge does not rule on a dismissal without first hearing both the defendant and the complainant.
Echoing Senators Risa Hontiveros and Koko Pimentel, she said that what happened instead was highly irregular: it was not the defendant, Duterte, who sought dismissal, but the senator-judges themselves who raised and acted on the motion on her behalf, even before trial proceedings commenced.
"Ni hindi hinintay ang iniimpeach o inimpeach na siya mismo ang magpadismiss. Malinaw na walang due process. Sila-sila lang ang nagmotion at nagrule sa sarili nilang motion,” she said.
(They didn’t even wait for the impeached official to file for dismissal herself. It’s clear there was no due process. They made the motion themselves and ruled on their own motion.)
RELATED: Hontiveros, Pimentel urge 'cold neutrality' in impeach court as senator-judges
De Lima praised the five senator-judges who voted against the motion.
As for the 18 who voted in favor, including Escudero and Duterte allies, she said: “Shame on the rest for this travesty and ignominy that will mark them for the rest of their lives.”
Summons issued. Despite sending the articles of impeachment back to the House, effectively putting the prosecution's presentation on hold until the House responds, the impeachment court still issued a writ of summons to Duterte.
This, however, is far different from what the Senate rules state itself — that the writ of summons follows once the articles of impeachment are heard.
RELATED: Impeachment court summons Sara Duterte, delays reading of impeach articles
