Committee Ruling Sets Stage For Philippine VP Duterte Impeachment Vote

Manila: A Philippine congressional committee said Wednesday it had found probable cause to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte, setting the stage for a House of Representatives vote with major 2028 presidential race implications.

The justice committee voted unanimously that evidence in a pair of complaints alleging Duterte misused public funds in office and made a death threat against President Ferdinand Marcos had successfully established probable cause to pursue impeachment.

The two complaints will now be consolidated into one before being sent to the plenary for a vote.

Under the Philippine constitution, an impeachment by the House of Representatives triggers a Senate trial, where a guilty verdict would ban former president Rodrigo Duterte's eldest daughter from elected office for life.

Lawmaker Leila De Lima, one of the complaints' endorsers, said the evidence showed an "alarming pattern of amassing unexplained wealth" as well as threats that struck "at the very heart of our constitutional order".

"There's no question we have enough and valid reason for this process to move forward and impeach the vice president," De Lima told the committee before the vote.

The threat against Marcos stemmed from a late-night press briefing in which Duterte claimed to have hired an assassin to kill the president should he have her cut down first.

She later said her comments had been misinterpreted.

On Wednesday, the National Bureau of Investigation told the committee the vice president's alleged death threat qualified as sedition.

Bank records presented by the committee in previous hearings, meanwhile, suggested large discrepancies between the vice president's publicly declared net worth -- 88 million pesos ($1.4 million) as of 2024 -- and hundreds of transactions involving 6.8 billion pesos.

The vice president declined to appear at any of the hearings, saying she would answer questions if the process reached the Senate.

Duterte and Marcos have been engaged in a high-stakes political brawl that erupted within weeks of their 2022 win in the presidential election, when the vice president was denied her favoured cabinet portfolios and instead named education secretary.

The vice president, who in February formally announced plans to run for president, was impeached by the House last year only to see the Supreme Court toss the case out over procedural issues.

The 2025 impeachment bypassed the committee process entirely when the necessary one-third of House members signed an impeachment complaint and sent it directly to the Senate.

The House is currently in recess, meaning any new impeachment vote must wait until they return on May 4.

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