When “Rule of Law” Becomes a Slogan for Impunity
Supporters of Vice President Sara Duterte have wasted no time declaring victory. They proclaim the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the “one-year bar rule” as a triumph for the rule of law, the integrity of democratic institutions, and, most importantly, the Filipino people.
But beneath the polished phrasing and smug declarations lies a dangerous inversion of truth. This ruling is not a triumph — it is a technicality weaponized. It did not answer the allegations. It silenced them.
Let’s be clear: the Court did not declare the Vice President innocent. It did not refute the accusations of misused confidential funds, bribery, hidden wealth, or reckless public statements about assassination plots. It simply said: Come back next year.
And yet her supporters, emboldened and sneering, now accuse critics of being sore losers, saying they “bark” after being “beaten by the law.” They point to the “immediacy and finality” of the Court’s decision as if those words mean anything outside the reality of power. One wonders: What is accountability to them?
They invoke rule of law while applauding the escape of someone who, time and again, has shown contempt for transparency, decorum, and truth. They say “democratic institutions have been protected” while cheering a decision that shielded a powerful official from scrutiny, not by disproving the claims — but by dodging them.
And when confronted with the moral outrage of citizens, they scoff. “The Constitution has been followed,” they say. “The Court has spoken.” But the people, too, have spoken. They have seen the Vice President spew falsehoods in the name of national security. They have watched public money vanish into “confidential” shadows while classrooms crumble. They have heard the bravado, the bullying, the bluster — and still, these same defenders dare speak of integrity?
The “One-Year Bar Rule” Decision
Was Never Meant to Protect the Powerful
Yes, the 1987 Constitution provides what is known as the one-year bar rule — a safeguard that prohibits the filing of more than one impeachment complaint against the same official within a 12-month period. It is a provision written not to favor incumbents, but to protect the process itself. It was meant to prevent harassment and political gamesmanship, to ensure that the tool of impeachment is used with sobriety, not vengeance.
But today, that same safeguard has been twisted into a shield for impunity. What was once a rule of protection for institutional order is now being weaponized to obstruct inquiry, to block legitimate grievances, and to preserve the untouchability of the powerful. It is no longer functioning as a restraint against abuse — it has become an excuse for inaction.
The ruling handed down by the Supreme Court did not declare the Vice President innocent. It did not weigh the substance of the allegations. It did not investigate the PHP612 million in confidential funds. It did not scrutinize the charges of bribery, hidden wealth, or reckless public disclosures about alleged assassination plots. It merely looked at the clock and said: Too early, too soon, try again next year.
To stretch the one-year bar rule into a blanket amnesty for high officials is to commit a betrayal — not just of law, but of the very notion of public accountability. It turns impeachment into a once-a-year lottery, where timing trumps truth and process replaces principle. Is that the kind of republic we are now? One where allegations of grave misconduct must wait in line behind a technical schedule, like bureaucratic paperwork queued at a government desk?
Let’s not pretend this was a “landmark victory” for the Filipino people. A landmark victory would have been a fair and transparent hearing, where truth could rise or fall on its own merits. A landmark victory would have put the Vice President’s actions — or inactions — under the same light we expect all public officials to face. But that did not happen.
What we got instead was a procedural escape hatch — a legal fig leaf large enough to cover a multitude of sins. It is the same door used time and again by those who have the means to manipulate rules but fear the reckoning of truth.
And what does this say to the average citizen? That the law, while meticulously followed in form, has no real appetite for justice when it involves the powerful? That while the people may struggle with everyday corruption, inefficiency, and decay, those in the highest seats can simply invoke process to silence dissent?
The real tragedy here is not that the Vice President avoided impeachment — it’s that the system has grown so comfortable with its own evasions. That we now celebrate delay as if it were vindication. That we equate legal timing with moral clarity.
This is not justice. This is technicality dressed in judicial robes. It is due process that stops before it can even begin. And if that becomes the norm — if the Constitution is reduced to a calendar of procedural gamesmanship — then impeachment ceases to be a democratic mechanism. It becomes a mockery.
Let no one say this outcome affirms the strength of the rule of law. It only confirms the strength of those who know how to bend it.
The Audacity of Smugness
The audacity of Duterte’s supporters lies not just in their denial, but in their triumphalism — that smug certainty that a technical escape is equivalent to moral absolution. They have seized a procedural loophole and hoisted it like a trophy, as though surviving a legal technicality is the same as defeating the truth.
They now drape themselves in the language of statecraft — constitutional fidelity, judicial finality, democratic stability — as if cloaking impunity in legal terms makes it less rotten. They do not speak of innocence, only of invalidation. They do not answer to the allegations — they simply point to the calendar, smirk, and say: “Too late.”
And with that, they believe the matter closed. To them, critics are merely “barking losers,” sore partisans whose indignation, they say, has no legal standing. But barking — in the long arc of history — has always been the sound of awakening. Of outrage finding its voice. Of resistance sharpening its teeth. When institutions go silent or complicit, it is the street that must make noise.
But noise, too, has consequences. Because people are watching — and some are not content to wait for another impeachment window. They see how language is bent, how phrases like rule of law and defense of democratic institutions are trotted out not as shields of justice, but as weapons of control. These are no longer sacred concepts — they are violated scripts, spoken without conviction, used to deflect, not to defend.
And maybe — just maybe — there are those who, disillusioned and disgusted, will begin to believe that noise is not enough. That protest is not enough. That when every legal mechanism is co-opted and every institution reduced to a gatekeeper for the powerful, then escalation becomes inevitability.
Unity? They say the country must unite. But what kind of unity do they demand — unity under silence? Unity under surrender? Unity under the steady advance of authoritarian logic, dressed in legal robes?
Defend democratic institutions? How? When those very institutions have been turned into performance stages, where justice is delayed, distorted, or denied — not for all, but for those who matter most to power?
These once-powerful phrases — rule of law, accountability, democracy, unity — are now bruised and bleeding. Repeated so often by those who betray them, they have become hollow. Violated. Raped of their original meaning.
So perhaps it is no longer enough to repeat them. Perhaps the situation must accelerate — because what do you do when the brakes are rigged? When every call for order is, in fact, a tactic to preserve a diseased status quo? When restraint becomes complicity?
If they do not want the republic to break, then they must stop mocking those trying to save it.
Because once the people begin to believe that law no longer protects them — but only those at the top — then the contract breaks. And when that contract breaks, no court, no Senate, no press conference will be enough to stop what follows.
The audacity of smugness always assumes the crowd will stay quiet. But history tells another story.
The Decision Did Not Stop the Situation
— It Merely Delayed the Reckoning
Let it be said plainly, without embellishment or euphemism: The decision of the Supreme Court does not stop the situation. It halts no outrage, answers no questions, and restores no faith. It merely pauses a moment of confrontation that must — and will — come again.
It does not erase the gravity of the allegations. It does not refute the charge of hundreds of millions in confidential funds funneled into shadow budgets. It does not exonerate the Vice President from claims of bribery, of hiding wealth, of weaponizing public discourse with reckless insinuations about plots and enemies. It simply says: You cannot ask about this now.
But people have asked. People are still asking. And no matter how loudly her defenders celebrate the procedural victory, no matter how many press releases proclaim her vindication, the rot of doubt remains. It festers not in the margins, but in the hearts of citizens who have seen this play before — where those in power are spared by rules never made for the powerless.
The Vice President may step forward and declare this decision a clean bill of health. But that is fiction. This is not an acquittal. It is not a triumph. It is a procedural delay masquerading as legitimacy — a postponement dressed in legal robes. If she believes this decision grants her moral clarity, then she misunderstands not just justice, but the people she claims to serve.
Her supporters may gloat. They may ridicule dissenters as “barking losers,” may sneer at the frustrations of the citizenry, and may weaponize the decision as a political bludgeon. They may fill social media with hashtags, quote lines from the ruling, and proclaim “rule of law” with the zeal of those who know they have won this round.
But history has a longer memory than headlines. It does not forget who manipulated the rules. It does not remember who filed first — it remembers who answered, who evaded, who faced judgment, and who ran.
And the people? They may have lost this round. But they are not vanquished. They are watching, and more importantly, they are remembering. This decision has not cooled the fire — it has only banked it. And fires do not vanish when covered; they smolder until they find oxygen again.
Let the defenders of the “one-year bar” rule enjoy their moment. Let them toast their technical triumph. But they must know this: a republic cannot be built on technicalities alone. A democracy that clings to procedure while ignoring principle becomes hollow, brittle — a machine, cold and precise, but ultimately lifeless.
And machines that are built to delay justice, to dull truth, to silence reckoning — they do not last forever.
Because if rule of law becomes a slogan uttered only to shield those who trample on it, if courts become tools to preserve hierarchy rather than confront abuse, then what remains is not a democracy — but a mechanism of delay. A system of slow suffocation, where the people are told to wait, to wait, and to wait some more — until memory fades and truth dies of exhaustion.
But memory does not fade. Not in the hearts of those who still believe that this republic is worth saving. Not in the minds of those who still understand that democracy is not built by laws alone, but by justice that is seen, felt, and believed.
And machines can be stopped.
Not by barking, but by rising.
Not by begging for accountability, but by demanding it.
Not by waiting for another technical opening — but by making one.
This decision did not end the reckoning. It merely dared the people to finish what the institutions refused to begin.