The Philippines House of Representatives voted on Monday to impeach Vice-President Sara Duterte for the second time, a move that places a significant hurdle in her path toward the 2028 presidential election.
The case will now proceed to the Senate for a trial, where a conviction would result in the 47-year-old being permanently disqualified from holding any public office.
The impeachment is based on allegations that Duterte misused public funds and made public threats against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, First Lady Liza Araneta, and the former House speaker.
These are the same grounds cited in a 2025 impeachment effort that was eventually blocked by the Supreme Court on a technicality before a Senate trial could begin. The case was revived this year after a House committee concluded last week that there was sufficient evidence to move forward.
Duterte has remained defiant, labelling the impeachment case as “nothing more than a scrap of paper” and refusing to attend committee hearings she described as politically motivated.
Following the vote, her legal counsel issued a statement asserting that the burden of proof now rests entirely with the accusers to substantiate their allegations in accordance with the law.
The vote in the House served as a significant indicator of the President’s influence, with 255 of the 290 legislators in attendance voting in favour of the motion. This total easily surpassed the one-third majority required to advance the case.
However, the outcome in the Senate is far from guaranteed. Unlike the House, which is often more aligned with the incumbent president due to its district-based structure, the 24 members of the Senate are elected on a national level and frequently have their own presidential or vice-presidential aspirations.
Notably, in the 2025 mid-term elections, candidates allied with the Duterte family performed better than those supported by the Marcos coalition.
The current political rift marks the total collapse of the “Uniteam” alliance that won the 2022 elections in a landslide.
At that time, Duterte – then the frontrunner to succeed her father, Rodrigo Duterte – opted to run for Vice-President alongside Marcos to consolidate their respective support bases.
The partnership began to unravel as the two leaders pursued different political agendas, with tensions peaking after Duterte claimed during an online press conference that she had instructed someone to kill the President, the First Lady, and the then-Speaker Martin Romualdez if she were to be assassinated.
Relations were further strained in March last year when President Marcos allowed the International Criminal Court to arrest Rodrigo Duterte. The former president is currently being held at The Hague, where he faces trial for alleged crimes against humanity related to the hundreds of deaths that occurred during his “war on drugs”.
Despite the ongoing legal challenges, Duterte remains a formidable political figure, holding a 17-point lead over her closest rival in a March survey.
