[Rear View] Week 1 of Sara’s impeachment trial: Political death by boredom

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But the coming week, with the Vice President's chief of staff on the witness stand, promises to be the most-watched episode yet. It could perk up flagging viewer interest. 

The Senate plenary has been converted into a lawyers’ playroom, with objections, invocations of rules, rulings, and precedents peppering the often tiresome exchanges between the prosecution and defense. Latin phrases, so beloved by lawyers, are being dropped so casually that online publications saw fit to put up art card primers for the mass audience. 

Legal maxims have always been the recourse of both the erudite and the pretentious, part of lawyers’ default vocabulary, widely understood in courtrooms. But there’s no applause from the general public. Latin phrases? Sounds Greek to me. At some point, one is tempted to doze off.

The impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte might as well be called political death by boredom. And that may well be part of the strategy. Why bother to argue passionately before the court of public opinion when you can just make the trial so distant and boring that people tune out? 

Why indeed bother? The Duterte senators have made up their minds. Expert testimonies, damning evidence, lawyerly eloquence will not change their votes to acquit. 

Still, we must credit these senators for their performances of impartiality. 

The other senator-judges should be applauded for their patience. Imagine being lectured on the Constitution, on rules and procedures, and being handed photocopied excerpts from the Constitution like a grade school student. But the early law school flexing only exposed a tenuous grasp of the law, and validated online chatter that some grandstanding senator-judges were not particularly bright in school. 

And the stage has been set for a challenge before the Supreme Court on the issue of the voting threshold, set at 16 by the presiding officer with no objection from his colleagues. Still, Representative Leila de Lima, one of the House prosecutors, says the issue is not yet ripe to justify judicial interpretation.

The Vice President’s fate will eventually be sealed by a court packed with appointees of her father. The same court that, in the view of many, saved her during her first impeachment may yet again come to her rescue and provide legal cover for her acquittal. 

Boils down to survival

Sara Duterte is being tried by a Senate shaken by the flood control scandal and irreparably divided by a power grab staged on her behalf. Some senators will seek redemption, the Senate’s and their own, while others have grasped at the opportunity to display their undying loyalty to the Dutertes, rituals of performative impartiality notwithstanding. For wasn’t the power grab that installed Alan Peter Cayetano as Senate president in May, before his ouster a few weeks after, all about controlling the proceedings? It was all about protecting the Vice President. Otherwise, why would Senator Bato de la Rosa come out of hiding and risk arrest? He surely won’t do it for Cayetano.

For the political class, it all boils down to survival.

The second week — with Zuleika Lopez, the Vice President’s chief of staff, on the witness stand — promises to be the most-watched episode yet. It could perk up flagging viewer interest. 

Anticipation is mounting. So are the possible scenarios. Will the Vice President accompany her and provide solace, the figurative hand-holding as they walk together through the fire? Will there be another meltdown, the kind triggered by Lopez’s detention by the House in 2004 and unleashed the midnight threat or the revelation of the kill plot against the President and his kin? 

For the Duterte supporters, Lopez’s detention was unjust. But the threat against the President was absolute, not conditional, says the National Bureau of Investigation and serious enough to be considered active by the National Security Council. Yes, such a threat was made, the defense conceded, but understandable and justified to protect a loved one.

For the defense, love wins and justifies murderous intent. – Rappler.com

Joey Salgado is a former journalist, and a government and political communications practitioner. He served as spokesperson for former vice president Jejomar Binay.