Fear of SC ruling made House set aside impeachment complaint

We are deeply dismayed by the action of the Justice Committee today, where our impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte was set aside on the basis of the one-year bar rule. We firmly maintain that no constitutional provision or House rule was violated when we filed our complaint on February 2, and we stated our position clearly at the committee.

The February 6 reckoning, which was based on an earlier decision that has henceforth been modified last January 2026, no longer holds. As the SC had to flip flop on its basis to junk the articles of impeachment during the 19th Congress, the new reckoning of the one year bar is at the very least January 15, 2026. This is under a new SC ruling stating that the bar came into effect when the House failed to include 3 impeachment complaints in the order of business within 10 session days and that a session day was redefined as being one calendar day. A plain reading of the January 2026 SC ruling will bear this out.

But we want to go beyond the procedural debate and speak plainly to the Filipino people about what is really happening here.

We would not be facing these legal complications today if the impeachment of Sara Duterte had been allowed to run its proper course last year. President Marcos Jr. stood in the way. The Senate prolonged the trial. The Supreme Court intervened. Each of these acts by the country’s most powerful institutions served to shield a sitting Vice President from accountability — and now the burden of navigating the resulting legal maze is being placed on the shoulders of the very complainants and the people seeking accountability. This is grossly unfair, unjust and unacceptable.

The one-year bar, as it is now being wielded, is double-edged and threatens to become yet another instrument by which those in power protect one another from the consequences of their actions. The people did not create this mess. The powerful did — and it is outrageous that the people must now adjust their pursuit of justice to accommodate legal problems created by the very officials they are trying to hold accountable.

We strongly disagree with the setting aside of our complaint on these grounds. More importantly, we call on the House of Representatives to assert its constitutional authority and independence. The House has the power to cr