[Newspoint] A supreme scandal

It shouldn’t be so hard to come to terms with the imperfections of democracy so long as these imperfections occur as a matter of course, unintended, unmanipulated, unmotivated by self-interest. Well, the opposite seems precisely the case with the intervention by the Supreme Court in a process intended by law to be  exclusively Congress business — impeachment.

What particularly rankles is the bias and power-tripping that tend to underlie the intervention in the recurrent case of Vice President Sara Duterte. Rather prone to impeachment, she has found favor with the Supreme Court before, and is now back for more. 

The first time the Supreme Court got her off was on July 25, 2025, by a unanimous vote: 13 justices voted in favor, two did not vote; 12 of those who voted had been appointed by Duterte’s father, Rodrigo, when he was president (2016-2022), and one, although a non-Duterte appointee, had been coopted and lavished the dubious honor of writing the decision. 

In that decision, the Court ruled that the House of Representatives had begun the proceedings too soon after the last impeachment case had been filed against her. The earlier case had not prospered enough to occasion intervention from the court. Still, in framing its ruling, the Court had to refer to that case: At the minimum, a year’s interval between filings is required. Even then, the Court’s way of counting was disputed, although, again, to no avail.

No specific issues, technical or otherwise, are raised this time. In fact, the suit is couched in generalities. Duterte’s champions are asking the court to stop the House hearings claiming that the impeachment case against her is “constitutionally and procedurally infirm, and should have been dismissed at threshold for insufficiency in form and/or substance.”

Actually, the accusations against Duterte cannot be more specific: embezzling hundreds of millions of taxpayer pesos and plotting the assassination of the President and his wife and his cousin, the former Speaker — she in fact went public about taking out a contract herself, gangland-fashion, for their murder. Anyway, with 11 of the 12 Duterte justices and the indulged recruit still sitting, the Supreme Court might be expected to favor her again.

Out of my own deep, if possibly inadequately understood, sense of scandal, I have decided to seek out my ever trusty resource person, Adolf Azcuna, retired Supreme Court justice. Here’s our exchange:

Me: I cannot quite reconcile in my mind — a strictly lay one, admittedly — why all impeachment issues could not be left to be decided by the Senate as the impeachment court.

Looking at the exigent intent involved, and given the unwieldiness and slowness of the regular judicial process, making impeachment exclusively congressional business is easy enough for me to grasp and accept: it is intended to stop, immediately (“forthwith,” as the law itself commands) and decisively (by unappealable Senate judgment), certain officials doing the nation critical harm with the great powers in their hands. 

The arrangement further strikes me as in keeping with the basic democratic doctrine of separation of powers particularly in this illustration: the Supreme Court passes ultimate judicial judgment across the board; the President pardons; the House impeaches and the Senate tries and passes judgment; and the three exercise those powers, with absolute finality, respectively.

Azcuna: …It’s when an institution enjoying exclusive power is perceived to have capriciously exercised that prerogative and under its cover commits a grave injustice that a way has been provided to seek a countervailing relief from that very real possibility. 

Me: It seems to me that the Supreme Court being exempt from accountability in case it may have itself committed capricious exercise of prerogative and grave injustice in making that decision is reason enough to keep it out. Also, is it not arguable, by a further operation of legal logic, that impeachment should preclude intervention by any court for that matter because it does not involve penal action?

Azcuna: It’s exclusive only until it’s not. But the countervailing intervention should be unsheathed sparingly and only in very nation-shaking instances. The [Supreme Court] can be checked by impeachment and by the loss of trust in its integrity and independence, its only true assets. 

Me: Precisely. Supreme Court justices being impeachable officials themselves, the more reason they should stay out of impeachment.

Azcuna: A very solid point. I have said they cannot craft the rules for their own impeachment as that violates…Rule No. 1 of due process: No one can be the judge of one’s own cause. That’s why they should act very sparingly and only when the anomaly threatens the nation’s very fabric. … it’s a most difficult territory.

As if on cue, the cry is heard:  Impeach the Supreme Court! And in a shared sense of righteous outrage, we grab the damn crusty-skinned reptile and throw it — in the water. 

I can still hear it laughing. – Rappler.com