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Vice President Sara Duterte has requested the impeachment court to junk the case against her. Prosecutors are opposing the move, saying that the Senate would go against the Constitution if it were to immediately dismiss the articles of impeachment without proceeding to a full trial.

It would go against the letter and the spirit of the Constitution if the case is dismissed, even before the trial itself, even before the presentation of evidence, and evaluation of evidence, prosecutor Leila de Lima of party-list group Mamamayang Liberal said. Our position has always been that the function and duty of the Senate is to conduct a trial, to hear the evidence, and to come up with a decision, prosecutor Chel Diokno of party-list group Akbayan added.

De Lima, however, has not ruled out the possibility of any senator introducing a motion to dismiss the impeachment case upon the reconvening of the impeachment court. We will vehemently oppose that, De Lima said. Private prosecutor Reynaldo Robles also cited the previous impeachment trials of Joseph Estrada and Renato Corona, which he said were both unsuccessful in their attempts to have their impeachment cases dismissed outright.

De Lima argued that dismissing the case without allowing them to present the evidence against her is considered a premature action. During the first impeachment saga against Duterte in 2025, Senator Robin Padilla, the vice president's ally, filed a resolution seeking to dismiss the case against her even before the convening of the impeachment court. Padilla will be a senator-judge in the full trial proper in July.

Duterte's reply to the impeachment articles also invoked freedom of expression among other arguments to defend her apparent threats to the life of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his family in 2024. While we do not want to respond to the merits or defenses being raised by the Vice President… freedom of speech is not absolute, there are limits to freedom of speech, and we will leave it to the impeachment court to resolve the arguments made by the Vice President to respond, Diokno said.

This is not the first challenge to Duterte's impeachment trial. In 2025, the Supreme Court temporarily allowed Duterte to take office after she filed a motion against her removal from office. Her lawyers claimed that the Senate's decision to pursue the impeachment trial was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court later ruled that the Senate's power to try and decide impeachment cases was protected by the Constitution. This ruling paved the way for Duterte's impeachment trial to proceed.

The prosecution panel has always maintained that Duterte is not immune to impeachment. The fact that Duterte has already been impeached once in 2025 does not make her immune to another impeachment process, they argued. Duterte's lawyers have maintained that impeachment is a political process that should be decided by the House of Representatives, not the Senate. They argue that the Senate's power to try and decide impeachment cases is unconstitutional.

Duterte's impeachment trial is set to reconvene in July. In a statement on Monday, her lawyer said that they are confident that she will be acquitted. We believe that the evidence presented will prove her innocence, he said.

We will vehemently oppose that, De Lima said.