Philippine Congress endorses impeachment complaint against VP

The Philippine lower house of Congress on Wednesday endorsed an impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte, the daughter of the country's firebrand former president, paving the way for a rare trial in the Senate.

A bill of impeachment will be sent to the upper house, where the 23 senators would serve as jurors in proceedings that could result in the removal of Duterte and her lifetime disqualification from holding office.

Duterte would be the Philippines' second most senior official to face removal from office.

The grounds for impeachment were not immediately clear. Duterte has consistently denied wrongdoing and has described moves against her as a political vendetta.

House Secretary General Reginald Velasco during a plenary session of the lower house said 215 of the 306 lawmakers endorsed a complaint seeking her impeachment.

The development is a major setback for the influential Duterte family, whose popularity grew rapidly after Rodrigo Duterte was swept to power in 2016 as a maverick, crime-busting mayor, who as president upended Philippine foreign policy and launched a "war on drugs" that killed thousands of people.

BITTER ROW

The move against Sara Duterte comes amid a bitter rift between her and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr that has played out in public following the collapse of a powerful alliance between their families that brought them a landslide victory in the 2022 election.

The row reached a dramatic crescendo when Duterte in a November press conference said she had contracted an assassin to kill Marcos, the first lady and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, the president's cousin, if she herself were killed. She later said her remarks was taken out of context.

Marcos, for his part, has said he does not support her impeachment but has no power over the legislative branch.

A representative of Duterte did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the endorsement of the impeachment complaint.

Duterte becomes the fourth official in the Philippines to be impeached, following ex-President Joseph Estrada, an ombudsman and a former Supreme Court chief justice.

Grounds for impeachment of a top officials in the Philippines include culpable violation of the constitution, treason, bribery, graft and corruption, other high crimes, or betrayal of public trust.

ABS-CBN News posted a statement on X attributed to her brother, Davao congressman Paolo Duterte, who said he was "appalled and enraged by the desperate and politically motivated efforts to railroad" the impeachment.

"Mark my words: this reckless abuse of power will not end in their favour," it quoted him as saying.