It took three laborious days of impeachment proceedings for opposing lawyers to reach an agreement on a proposition that required no forensic ingenuity whatsoever. It took three long days for them to agree on something everyone already knew happened in the unholy hours of November 23, 2024.
Fact: Vice President Sara Duterte ran amok during a hastily convened Zoom meeting with reporters and influencers, spewing invectives and admitting that she had instructed a hitman to assassinate her 2022 running mate, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.; his wife, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos; and his cousin, then-House speaker Martin Romualdez, should she herself be killed.
This is the thing about courts and lawyers. They dance around the obvious, spending grueling hours establishing what every Tom, Dick, and Harry already knows. That, however, is the price — and the virtue — of due process. It is tedious precisely because it is meant to leave as little room as possible for doubt.
It is also a luxury that Duterte’s father Rodrigo denied the thousands of “Tokhang” victims — the innocent, the guilty, and those who simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet it is a luxury now fully extended to the biggest Duterte nepo baby of them all.
