Impeachment trial fatigue
Last Wednesday was Day 26 of the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.
The impeachment court heard the views of four former Supreme Court justices on the number of votes needed to convict the VP. Three of them said the two-thirds vote requirement cited in the Constitution is not automatically based on the existing 24-membership of the Senate.
Barring any changes in the schedule of hearings earlier issued by the Senate, the senators may be able to cast their vote on the VP’s impeachment before the start of the Christmas season.
That means, there is still a long way to go in the third impeachment trial ever held in the country’s history. But what initially started as an event that the public was excited to watch and monitor appears to have become a ho-hum or boring affair after the second week.
If you take a close look at the people in the public gallery of the Senate session hall, as shown on television and social media, the bored demeanor of the audience is unmistakable. There are occasional concealed yawns.
Except probably for the media reporters covering the trial, many in the audience appear to be nonchalant or indifferent to the give-and-take between the opposing lawyers and senator-judges.
Unlike in the 2000 and 2012 impeachment trial of former President Joseph Estrada and then Chief Justice Renato Corona, respectively, where the proceedings were keenly watched on video facilities installed in restaurants, coffee shops, hospital waiting areas, bus stations, and other places where a lot of people congregate, today’s trial does not seem to enjoy a similar level of attention and interest.
These days, many of those facilities are hardly, if any, locked to the proceedings, thus giving the impression that their viewers have better things to watch than see the prosecution and defense lawyers argue on the witnesses’ testimonies.
For obvious reasons, the supporters of the opposing camps have been actively posting on social media excerpts of the trial they consider as favorable to their side and making snide comments about their counterpart.
The disinformation and fake news are all over cyberspace and there is no way to figure out which are true and which are fabricated.
From the looks of it, impeachment trial fatigue may have set in and is expected to continue and worsen as the trial goes to its second month and counting. The event that is expected, one way or the other, to have a significant effect in the 2028 presidential elections has become a nonevent for most people.
With the present high cost of energy brought about by the undeclared war between the United States and Iran, the devastation caused by the recent typhoons, and the imprisonment of prominent politicians for involvement in anomalous flood control projects, who cares if the prosecution is able to prove that the VP should be removed from her office?
For the ordinary Filipino whose primary concern is how to make ends meet for his or her family, the ongoing drama in the Senate is nothing but a dispute among political groups that want to secure political control of the country.
Either way the trial goes, acquittal or conviction, its result is not expected to make a difference in his or her life. So why bother to watch the proceedings?
Aside from its extended period, the fatigue may be traced to the trial’s lackluster beginning.
It did not have the drawing power of the two past impeachments that featured former Chief Justice Andres Narvasa and former Solicitor General Estelito Mendoza as lawyers for Estrada and former Supreme Court Associate Justice Serafin Cuevas for Corona.
With those prominent defense lawyers at the scene, the public expected “fireworks” and dramatic developments during the trial so they watched the proceedings, and they were not disappointed.
What’s more, the debates and discussions during the trial were professionally conducted and the senator-judges then were of a high caliber and asked questions that aimed at getting the truth and not to promote their political agenda, as it is happening now in the VP’s trial.
(Incidentally, according to the grapevine in the legal community, had Mendoza, who had earned the title “lawyer of last resort” because of his spectacular court victories, had not passed away on March 26, 2025, he was believed to be poised to act as lawyer for the VP. Had that happened, that would be a blockbuster!)
Sadly, the same description cannot be applied to the VP’s trial. Both the prosecution and defense panels have committed errors and missteps in the trial that make veteran trial lawyers and law professors shake their head in disbelief because of their egregious nature.
So much so that if sections of the proceedings were to be used as teaching or training aids on the subject of “trial practice” or “moot court,” the material should be rated PG, i.e., professional guidance is advised.
With still about three months to go for the VP’s trial, we can only grin and bear its inconvenience, the fatigue notwithstanding.
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raul.palabrica@inquirer.net.
