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The Supreme Court (SC) has acted on the petitions challenging the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte by asking respondents to comment on the cases filed.
Specifically, the High Court gave the House of Representatives and the Senate 11 questions regarding Duterte’s impeachment process.
The questions ranged from the status of the impeachment complaints filed with the House, as well as queries on the transmittal of the said complaints. The SC also asked Congress if House members had carefully read the charges and the evidence before they signed off on the impeachment.
On Saturday, July 19, House spokesperson Princess Abante said the lower chamber had already complied with the SC’s request for information regarding the impeachment proceedings.
There are brewing concerns stemming from the SC’s directive to the House.
“Doon sa mga hinihingi, halos wala sa Senado, more sa Kamara (Most of the information being asked by the SC are only from the House, but less from the Senate). I am very concerned about that,” Mamamayang Liberal representative and incoming impeachment prosecutor Leila de Lima said in an interview with GMA’s DZBB.
“Puwede ‘yang gawing dahilan ng Senado, na out of judicial courtesy sa Supreme Court, para hindi maging moot and academic ang mga issue raised in those two petitions, hindi muna sila gagalaw at hihintayin ang final resolution ng mga petisyon na ‘yan,” the lawmaker added.
(The move could be used by the Senate as an excuse, that out of judicial courtesy to the Supreme Court, to avoid making the issues raised in the two petitions moot and academic, they will not do anything and wait for the final resolution of the petitions.)
Not irregular
“Well, it’s (asking specific questions) not irregular because anything the Supreme Court does will be regular kasi kanila ‘yung (because) they control the procedure. They can dispense with the ordinary procedure and have an expedited procedure,” former SC senior associate justice Antonio Carpio told Rappler in an interview.
“So although this is not usual, it’s not irregular. It’s unusual but not irregular because it can be done,” he added.
Once a petition is filed with the High Court, the SC usually asks the parties for pleadings which include a comment from the respondent, a reply of the petitioner, and the parties’ memoranda summarizing their points, according to University of the Philippines (UP) College of Law professor and constitutional law expert Paolo Tamase.
If the SC thinks it’s necessary, it might call for oral arguments to hear the arguments of the parties, like it did in the petitions challenging the draconian anti-terror law and the Philhealth controversy. It can also opt not to hold any oral arguments. Later on, the SC will decide on the petitions.
In other words, the SC asking specific questions from a respondent like Congress is not irregular by itself. Time constraints could be the reason why the High Court directed specific queries at the two legislative chambers.
“Here…I think they are in a hurry to meet the deadline, because the impeachment court will convene soon. So they asked directly what they wanted to ask, so they sent that order asking specific questions, because I think because of the time constraint,” Carpio explained in a mix of Filipino and English.
Real standout?
For experts, what actually stood out in this case were the questions raised by the SC, and not the questioning itself.
“What makes the [SC] resolution unique is the level of factual detail it seeks,” Tamase told Rappler.
“The Court, especially since the 2019 case of Gios-Samar, has repeatedly insisted that it is not a trier of facts, which has led it to dismiss even high-profile cases before it that would require new evidence. However, many of the details it has now sought from the House are expected to be contested by either party, which begs the question of who would resolve them,” the law professor added.
Most of the questions raised by the SC in the resolution were the points of contention by the Vice President, one of the petitioners, and the group of Mindanao lawyers that filed the second petition.
In summary, the Vice President is arguing that the House violated the “one-year bar rule” in the 1987 Constitution — which states that “impeachment proceedings [cannot] be initiated against the same official more than once within a period of one year — when it pushed for her impeachment in February.
The lawyers, led by Apollo Quiboloy legal counsel Israelito Torreon and former Duterte official Martin Delgra, are claiming that the House did not follow due process in impeaching the Vice President and that the lawmakers who voted to impeach her may have failed to assess the evidence in the complaint.
“Without commenting on the merits of the petition, the level of detail may subject the House’s internal processes to a level of scrutiny that the Court usually hesitates to take in relation to a co-equal branch,” Tamase said.
“For example, because of its ‘enrolled bill doctrine,’ the Court usually does not entertain questions about whether a bill was passed following constitutional requirements — it simply relies on the certification of the House Speaker and Secretary-General. In that light, the resolution may create an incongruity, especially because the initiation of impeachment cases is the exclusive power of the House and therefore invites more caution from the Court before it intervenes,” he added.
Only about constitutional violations
Under the Constitution, the exclusive power to remove an impeachable official like the Vice President lies with the House. While the Senate, as the impeachment court, has the duty to try and decide impeachment cases.
So where can the SC enter? The High Court has intervened in past impeachment proceedings “when the sparse limits provided by the Constitution were alleged to have been violated,” according to the UP College of Law’s primer on impeachment.
The SC’s review can extend to legal questions arising from the impeachment procedure, such as the one-year bar rule being challenged by Duterte. But as to whether rules were followed or not, the UP College of Law also said there’s a view in the Corona vs. Senate case that says “that whether or not Senate Impeachment Rules were followed is a political question belonging to the Senate.”
For retired senior magistrate Carpio, among the 11 questions of the SC, only one was “material” or relevant to the case, as it was the only one related to an alleged constitutional violation.
“Only one raises constitutional issues. Whether the 10 session days were complied with, right?” Carpio said.
“I tend to agree with Justice Carpio insofar as this narrower question would already allow the Court to grant relief or resolve in favor of one of the parties without seemingly micromanaging the House. There is a rule of ‘constitutional avoidance,’ where the Court avoids dealing with unnecessary constitutional questions as a way of respecting its co-equal branches,” Tamase said.
Under the 1987 Constitution, after an impeachment is filed by a House member or any citizen upon the endorsement of a lawmaker, the verified complaint must be included in the Order of Business “within ten session days, and referred to the proper Committee within three sessions days thereafter.”
Three impeachment complaints were filed against Duterte, but none of these pushed through. House Secretary General Reginald Velasco did not also “immediately” refer the verified impeachment complaints to the Speaker, despite the existing rules. (READ: How did gov’t counter Sara’s claim that impeachment is unconstitutional?)
Duterte got impeached through a fourth impeachment complaint backed by 215 of 306 House lawmakers. The Office of the Solicitor General, representing the House, believes that the delay in the referral was not tantamount to initiation and that none of the first three complaints were referred to the justice committee. Therefore, the one-year bar rule was not violated.
The impeachment trial is currently on hold as the 20th Congress has yet to convene. The proceedings also suffered delays when the Senate approved a motion that ordered the remand or return of the articles of impeachment to the House. Experts said this move was unconstitutional.
– Rappler.com
