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Philippine lawmakers on Wednesday opened formal impeachment hearings against Vice President Sara Duterte, initiating a high-stakes political showdown fueled by accusations of massive corruption and extraordinary threats to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The proceedings represent a stunning rupture between the country’s two top leaders. Duterte, 47, faces a litany of severe charges, most notably the alleged embezzlement of 612.5 million pesos (about $10.19 million) in confidential government funds during her first 18 months in power.
According to reporting by OCCRP’s media partner in the Philippines, Rappler, the sweeping complaints transmitted to the House of Representatives include financial fraud, corruption and violent threats. Duterte is said to have fabricated official submissions to the Commission on Audit to conceal the misuse of public funds, bribed education officials and accumulated unexplained wealth and issued violent threats against the lives of President Marcos and his family.
Duterte, who remains in the country, refused to attend Wednesday's inaugural hearing, arguing that she was under no legal obligation to appear in person. Instead, she took to social media to dismiss the proceedings as a politically motivated "fishing expedition" orchestrated by the House of Representatives.
“The invitation to attend the hearing of the Committee on Justice is being used to create a media narrative that there will be a ‘mini-trial,’ based on the alleged non-response and non-attendance,” she wrote in a statement posted to Facebook.
Displaying her trademark defiance, the vice president demanded that lawmakers abandon the inquiry entirely. “The Committee has no choice but to dismiss the complaints due to the clear lack of evidence,” she stated.
The relationship between Duterte and Marcos has deteriorated from an electoral alliance of powerful dynastic families into open, visceral hostility.
The feud reached a fever pitch in November 2024 when the vice president publicly claimed she had hired an assassin to kill the president if she were to be assassinated first. In another macabre outburst, she reportedly threatened to exhume the remains of the president’s father — the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos — and hurl them into the sea.
This week’s hearings represent the second attempt by Congress to oust Duterte. Lawmakers previously voted to impeach her in February 2025 over similar allegations of corruption and threats against the president. However, the Philippine Supreme Court blocked that bid six months later, ruling that the vote violated a constitutional ban on initiating multiple impeachment proceedings within a single year.
The current political crisis unfolds under the heavy shadow of Duterte’s family legacy. Her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, was arrested last year and remains in the custody of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He is facing allegations of crimes against humanity tied to the brutal, extrajudicial anti-drug campaign that defined his presidency.
If convicted by the Senate, Sara Duterte would be stripped of the vice presidency and permanently barred from holding public office. The House Committee on Justice now has a maximum of 60 session days to conclude its investigation into the four complaints and decide whether to formally send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial, Rappler reported.
