A left-wing Philippine political coalition has filed a second impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte for the misuse of government funds, demanding that she be removed from her post and permanently barred from holding public office.
The impeachment complaint was filed with the House of Representatives yesterday by 75 activists, including human rights, labor, and student leaders, and was endorsed by the three representatives of the left-wing Makabayan parliamentary bloc.
The complaint (full text available here) accuses Duterte of “betrayal of public trust over the illegal use and mishandling of 612.5 million pesos ($10.3 million) in confidential funds,” according to a statement by the complainants.
It also alleges that the vice president and her staff tried to cover up spending irregularities by submitting fabricated documents to the Commission on Audit, and that Duterte refused to recognize Congress’ oversight functions when she skipped budget deliberations and refused to answer questions on her use of public funds.
“When confronted with legitimate questions about her use of these funds, she responded not with the transparency her oath demands, but with threats and intimidation — labeling critics as ‘reds,’ ‘terrorists,’ and ‘conspirators,’” the complaint states. “This conduct represents not merely a failure to uphold her oath, but an active campaign to undermine the very principles of accountability that oath was meant to protect.”
The impeachment complaint, which follows the filing of an earlier complaint on Monday, marks a further decline in the political fortunes of Duterte, a daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, who for the past year has been in a state of increasingly open political warfare with her one-time ally, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The pair formed a formidable partnership ahead of the presidential election of 2022, winning their respective elections in a landslide. But the partnership between the two regional political clans has since been on a sharp and slippery decline, due to a toxic combination of personal and political differences. In June, Duterte resigned from Marcos’s cabinet, saying that she felt “used” by the president and his allies. Meanwhile, her father Rodrigo Duterte, Marcos’s predecessor as president, has been vocally critical of the Marcos administration.
Since her resignation, Duterte has become the subject of a House investigation into her use of government funds. The House, which is controlled by Marcos allies including his ally House speaker Martin Romualdez, has also opened an inquiry into her father’s violent “war on drugs.”
The political feud culminated in an angry livestream on November 23 in which Duterte claimed that she had contracted someone to kill Marcos, along with his wife and Romualdez, in the event of her own assassination. The outburst came after the brief detention of her chief of staff, who was accused of hampering an ongoing congressional inquiry into Duterte’s alleged misuse of funds.
While Duterte has since tried to back pedal, saying that her comments were not a direct death threat but rather an expression of concern that her own life was under threat, she is now the subject of formal investigations by the Marcos administration. The National Bureau of Investigation has summoned Duterte to appear for questioning next week about her threats against the president.
The apparent threat has seemingly catalyzed attempts by long-time opponents of Duterte to remove her from office through the constitution’s mechanisms of impeachment. The Makabayan complaint was submitted to the House two days after a group of civil society activists initiated a separate impeachment complaint against the vice president. The group, which included Roman Catholic priests and pro-democracy activists, among them the former senator Leila de Lima, who was imprisoned on bogus drug charges under Duterte’s father’s administration, detailed 24 alleged crimes and irregularities that it claims should see Duterte removed from office.
In addition to her misuse of public funds, these included Duterte’s death threats against Marcos, her alleged role in the extra-judicial killings of drug suspects during her father’s “war on drugs,” and her alleged failure to stand up to Chinese bullying in the South China Sea. The complaint was endorsed by representative Perci Cendaña of the party-list group Akbayan.
While the political and activist networks behind these two impeachment complaints have staunchly opposed the Dutertes since their rise to national prominence in 2016, the intense feud between Duterte and Marcos has created a window of opportunity to remove Sara Duterte from office.
The impeachment complaints will be examined by a House of Representatives largely hostile to launching the vice president’s impeachment trial in the Senate. Under Article XI of the 1987 Constitution, one-third of House members need to vote in favor of a complaint in order to initiate Articles of Impeachment. This is then followed by an impeachment trial in the Senate, during which a two-thirds majority is required to impeach the official in question. Interestingly, the Constitution also states that no impeachment proceedings can be initiated against the same official more than once within a single year.
Given the protracted nature of the impeachment process, it is highly uncertain how quickly it will be resolved. As the Associated Press notes, Congress is to start its Christmas recess on December 20 and resume on January 13. Many legislators will then start campaigning for reelection ahead of the midterm elections that are scheduled for May 12, 2025.
A lot depends on whether the House leadership, and the Marcos administration with which it is aligned, are in favor of impeachment, and how urgently they pursue it. As Rappler explained, the impeachment proceeding could “take months, and may not even see the light of day at the Senate.” It could “also be over before members of the lower chamber go on a Christmas break.”