PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Friday clarified that the Supreme Court’s decision on the shelved impeachment case against Vice President Sara Duterte dealt solely with procedural issues and did not address the substance of the complaint.
“Let me clarify. The merits of the case were not examined by the Supreme Court… This does not decide the merits of the case. It just talked about procedure. So the procedure was faulty, was lacking. That’s the assessment of the Supreme Court,” Marcos told reporters covering his state visit to India.
“It has no bearing on the rightness or wrongness of the impeachment,” he stressed, adding that there had been no trial and the contents of the complaint were never debated.
“Again, there has been no trial. So the merits of the case have not been examined, tried, adjudicated, argued, discussed. Accountability doesn’t come into it. People have to understand—it is a procedural question,” he said.
He said the SC found errors in the handling of the impeachment, such as the wrong date and procedural lapses by the House of Representatives.
“It had nothing to do with the contents of the impeachment complaint, but with how it was handled,” he said.
Also, the President maintained that the executive branch had no role in impeachment proceedings.
“I’m an impeachable officer. I cannot involve myself in any of this. It’s really the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the House,” he noted.
On Wednesday, the Senate adopted Senator Rodante Marcoleta’s motion to follow the SC en banc’s immediately executory ruling dated July 25, 2025, effectively archiving the complaint. A separate motion by Senate Minority Leader Vicente Sotto III to table Marcoleta’s motion was defeated, 19-5.
The SC’s unanimous decision declared that the complaint violated the Constitution’s one-year bar rule and denied due process to the respondent, leading to the invalidation of the proceedings from the outset.
