Vice President Sara Duterte of the Philippines was impeached again on Monday, as lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to charge her with misusing public funds and betraying the public’s trust by threatening to assassinate the president.
The vote, in the Philippine House of Representatives, was the latest chapter in years of acrimony between President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. and Ms. Duterte — two political scions who had joined forces to run together in 2022 but fell out publicly soon after.
Ms. Duterte was first impeached by the House last year, not long after she claimed to have arranged for an assassin to kill Mr. Marcos if she were murdered. But those proceedings were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Senate shelved the complaint. (In the Philippines, as in the United States, the Senate tries and decides whether to convict an official impeached by the House of Representatives.)
This time too, it is unlikely that she will be convicted in the Senate of the Philippines because it is stacked with allies of the Dutertes.
Adding to the drama on Monday was a shake-up in the Senate, where a two-thirds vote is needed for any conviction. Senator Alan Cayetano, an ally of both Dutertes, was elected the new Senate president as the House started its vote on Ms. Duterte’s impeachment.
The vote in the House was 255 to 26. Nine lawmakers abstained.
Ms. Duterte’s legal team has called the process a “witch hunt” and a “fishing expedition.”
Why It Matters
Ms. Duterte, the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, is widely considered to be the front-runner for the 2028 elections. She and her family have said the impeachment vote is an all-out attempt by allies of Mr. Marcos — who is constitutionally limited to one term — to prevent her from becoming president.
But the lawmakers who endorsed the impeachment say they have questions about the wealth they say she started accumulating when she became mayor of Davao in 2019, as well as the use of funds during her time as vice president and simultaneously as education secretary from 2022 to 2024.
The House had looked at evidence presented by the Anti-Money Laundering Council, which said that it recorded bank transactions that did not match her declared annual net worth.
“Our vote today is not a declaration of guilt, it is a declaration that when serious allegations are raised against one of the highest officials of the land, Congress cannot look away,” Representative Bienvenido Abante Jr. said, explaining his “yes” vote.
Even though the Senate is unlikely to convict Ms. Duterte, the airing of the accusations against Ms. Duterte for weeks could have tarnished her brand, said Cleve Arguelles, the chief executive of WR Numero Research, a polling firm in the Philippines.
“There’s a well established precedent in Philippine politics that those who experience this kind of exposure end up losing public support by the time of the election period,” said Mr. Arguelles. “So that should worry her a lot.”
What’s Next?
The Senate is set to convene as an impeachment court as early as Wednesday.
The Senate president will preside over the trial. But analysts say the appointment of Mr. Cayetano now raises questions about whether the Senate will even move forward with the process. The former Senate president, Sen. Vicente Sotto III, was a senior member of the body that helped formulate the impeachment rules, and thus potentially more of a stickler.
If there is no conviction, Ms. Duterte would remain the vice president and is constitutionally protected from another impeachment complaint for one year.
If convicted, she would immediately be removed from office and disqualified from holding any public office in the Philippines for life.
There Was More Drama in the Senate
In another surreal element on Monday, Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the alleged enforcer behind the former President Duterte’s brutal war on drugs, suddenly returned to the Senate, about six months since he was last seen in public.
Mr. dela Rosa was believed to be in hiding after a Philippine official said that the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant for him, like it had for Mr. Duterte.
Before Mr. dela Rosa’s sudden appearance, Filipino law enforcement officials showed the former senate president an arrest warrant for Mr. dela Rosa, according to Mr. Cayetano, the new Senate president.
Closed-circuit television footage released by the Senate showed Mr. dela Rosa and his aides running through the halls of the Senate as law enforcement officials pursued them. Mr. dela Rosa had not been arrested as of Monday evening.
Aie Balagtas See contributed reporting from Manila.
Sui-Lee Wee is the Southeast Asia bureau chief for The Times, overseeing coverage of 11 countries in the region.
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