Duterte-allied lawyers ask SC to stop VP Sara impeachment anew

MANILA, Philippines – Some lawyers allied with the Duterte family filed a petition on Friday, March 27, asking the Supreme Court to again bar Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment.

The petitioners include lawyers Israelito Torreon, former executive secretary Vic Rodriguez, Duterte-time Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board chief Martin Delgra, and former budget chief Wendel Avisado.

Torreon is among the petitioners who questioned before the SC the first impeachment case against the Vice President in 2025. In its July 2025 decision, the SC blocked the said impeachment proceedings for violating Duterte’s due process and for being unconstitutional.

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In their new petition, the lawyers asked the High Court to issue a temporary restraining order to block the House of Representatives’ impeachment proceedings against the Vice President, “including hearings, deliberations, voting subpoenas, compulsory processes, committee reports, resolutions, recommendations, and any committee or plenary proceedings anchored.”

The lawyers also want the SC to declare that the House committee on justice gravely abused its powers or discretion when it sustained the third and fourth impeachment complaints against the Vice President, despite allegedly being insufficient in form and substance.

The House panel had earlier voted in favor of the sufficiency in form and substance of the impeachment complaints. It also declared that the impeachment complaints allege sufficient grounds.

They also want to declare the said complaints as “constitutionally and procedurally infirm, and should have been dismissed at threshold for insufficiency in form and/or substance.”

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A total of four new impeachment complaints were filed against the Vice President. Two were filed before the lapse of the one-year bar rule, while the other two were lodged after that.

The one-year bar rule is the constitutional provision that prevents the initiation of more than one impeachment proceeding against an impeachable official in a single year. This is one of the SC’s basis in striking down the 2025 impeachment complaint against the Vice President.

The new complaints cited allege offenses like misuse of confidential funds, Duterte’s alleged fabrications of submissions to the Commission on Audit, and her supposed threats against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his family, among others. 

Of the four complaints, two complaints were declared by the justice committee as sufficient both in substance and in form.

Currently, the House is at the hearing stage for the impeachment complaints, but the Vice President decided to snub the proceedings. – Rappler.com