HERE WE ARE again, dazed and confused. Bewildered. Angry. Tired.
The Senate, in an 18 to 5 vote, remanded the impeachment case against Vice President Sara Duterte back to the House of Representatives. The reason? Alleged constitutional infirmities. The solution? A freshly invented maneuver called “remand”—a word that doesn’t even exist in the Constitution, not in the letter, not in the spirit, not even in the margins.
Her loyalists burst into applause. What brilliance! What finesse! What constitutional genius from the 18 senators who, as they claim, are the real defenders of the Charter.
But ask a constitutional law professor—heck, ask a freshman law student—and you’ll hear a different tune: this is not just a misstep, it’s a deliberate stalling tactic, a smokescreen thrown up by pro-Duterte allies to protect one of their own from facing the music.
And now, everyone is a legal eagle, everyone’s a constitutional scholar. TV talking heads, TikTok influencers, your neighborhood barber. We’re having a national crash course on impeachment—while forgetting the most basic, most painful subject of all: morality.
‘So what are we left with? Legal jargon. Constitutional gymnastics. A circus of rules twisted beyond recognition … [while] the Filipino masses … cheering on the very leaders who will rob them blind, not just today, but every day, until there is nothing left to steal.’
HYPOCRISY REEKS
We say we’re tired of corruption. We march. We rant online. We pray for change. But when the moment comes—when there’s a real, tangible chance to hold someone accountable for questionable millions in confidential funds—we retreat into our old, tired excuses. “But the Speaker is worse!” “But the President did more!” “Why target her?”
I get it. The hypocrisy reeks. Yes, there are bigger fish. But that doesn’t mean you let this one slip back into the sea. In fact, if we begin here—if we start with the vice president—we draw a moral line in the sand. A precedent. A warning shot to all officials that accountability isn’t selective, that no one gets a free pass.
Instead, we twist ourselves into pretzels defending the indefensible. We let the immoral hide behind the veneer of legality. We allow loyalty to trump integrity. And when a few brave souls rise up to do what is right, to challenge the abuse of public funds, we call them the lawless ones.
That’s the irony, the tragedy: it has become lawless to be lawful in a lawless society.
CONSTITUTIONAL GYMNASTICS
Corruption has been so deeply woven into the fabric of our politics that we no longer see it for what it is. It’s just business as usual. It’s the price of doing politics. And worse, it’s the glue that binds our loyalty. We don’t just accept the rot—we worship it. We applaud it. We vote for it.
So what are we left with? Legal jargon. Constitutional gymnastics. A circus of rules twisted beyond recognition.
And in the background, the Filipino masses, anesthetized by poverty and partisanship, cheering on the very leaders who will rob them blind, not just today, but every day, until there is nothing left to steal.
And that, in the end, is the true constitutional crisis. Not in the law, but in the soul.
(Editor’s Note: Dr. Raymund E. Narag is an associate professor at the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department at the Southern Illinois University. He had his undergraduate courses at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.)