The Illusion of Finality:
Why the Supreme Court’s Ruling on Duterte’s Impeachment
is No Victory for the People
“You may silence the reckoning. But you cannot kill the question.”
In a blaze of legal triumphalism, the Supreme Court has declared — with a flourish worthy of the ancien régime — that the impeachment complaints filed against Vice President Sara Duterte are void, killed not by reasoned debate or public trial, but by a technicality: the so-called “one-year bar rule.” With this, her defenders trumpet the “rule of law” and the “integrity of democratic institutions” as though such phrases still hold substance in a country where power has learned to hide behind procedure.
Let this note be blunt: this decision does not exonerate. It exempts.
It does not elevate the law. It diminishes it, bending it into a shield for those too high to fall and too proud to answer.
And yet her supporters — some loud, some smug, some freshly anointed with the fragrance of impunity — crow that the matter is settled. That the one-year bar prevails. That everyone else is “wrong.” They speak of constitutional order, but they mean submission. They invoke the judiciary, but only as long as it shields their queen. And they dare to speak of stability while the scaffolding of public trust rots from within.
If one may ask: What, to them, is accountability?
Is it a stage prop, to be wheeled out for enemies and packed away for allies? Is it something only the poor, the weak, the powerless are asked to answer to?
People have heard the Vice President speak — of rebellion, of war, of invoking national security to silence dissent, of dismantling civil institutions in the name of “discipline.” People have seen her wield budget, propaganda, and authority with the arrogance of someone who believes that legacy entitles her to exception. People have seen her act, but not explain. People have heard her justify, but never stand trial.
Now the Supreme Court, with solemn robes and careful ink, has said: That’s enough. No more questions. No more pursuit. A bar has been triggered. Not by debate. Not by referral. Not by hearing. But by a shadow — a filing left untouched, dismissed not by deliberation but by disuse.
The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) is right to call this a misreading. But that is too gentle a word. What we witnessed is not mere misreading. It is reinterpretation — a rewriting of the constitutional design to fit the shape of power.
Let the facts speak clearly: The Constitution requires referral to the House Committee on Justice or the endorsement of one-third of the House to initiate impeachment. In February 2025, more than one-third of the House did sign and transmit such a complaint. It was valid. It was constitutional. It was lawful.
Yet the Court says: no. The earlier complaints, though never referred, were “initiated” and thus triggered the bar. But initiated by whom? By filing alone? Filing is not enough. Even in civil law, initiation requires acceptance, motion, referral, acknowledgement by the institution. What was done here was akin to declaring a war merely by scribbling it on paper — without approval, without dispatch, without force.
Even the landmark case of Francisco v. House of Representatives is clear: impeachment begins upon referral. Not upon scribble. Not upon symbolic submission.
And then — perhaps most alarmingly — the Court frets that Vice President Duterte was not given a chance to respond before the Senate. But nowhere in the Constitution is such a right inserted. Section 3(4) of Article XI is unambiguous: when one-third of the House signs, the complaint shall be transmitted to the Senate. The trial is where the defense begins — not before.
So what has happened?
Power has shielded itself — not with law, but with its interpretation.
And her defenders, cloaked in newfound judicial armor, bark that the matter is over. That critics “lost” and “barked too loud.” They do not know history. They do not know how often the defeated were right. They forget that legality and legitimacy are not always the same.
The Supreme Court’s ruling is final. But the consequences are not.
Because the reckoning, as always, is delayed — not denied.
This ruling will not stop the questions. It will not quiet the outrage of a public that sees its institutions now functioning as a velvet rope: protecting the elite, restricting accountability, treating law not as a sword of justice but a gatekeeper of privilege.
In protecting one powerful official from facing trial, the Court may have protected all who follow. But at what cost?
This decision may one day be remembered not as a triumph of law, but as its moment of betrayal.
“When law ceases to serve the people, it ceases to be law — it becomes a ritual of power.”
That is what is at stake.
And if the supporters of the Vice President believe this closes the book, they are mistaken. This is not the end. This is the prologue to a longer struggle: between procedure and principle, between shield and scrutiny, between silence and truth.
The people — some cowed, others watching, others rising — have not forgotten what power looks like when left unaccountable.
And in that memory, something stirs. A question. A resistance. A reckoning.
Soon.