The impeachment proceedings now underway in the House Committee on Justice may wrap up by the end of May even as the body continues to tackle questions over probable cause and the fairness of the process involving Vice President Sara Duterte.
San Juan Rep. Ysabel Maria Zamora, committee vice chairperson, said, “From the time of the initiation or referral to the Committee on Justice, it’s 60 session days. So our estimate is, if I’m not mistaken, around the end of May.”
The timeframe matters because the committee is working through a politically charged case while also trying to show that its members are approaching the proceedings without bias against the Vice President, despite public criticism and the intense national attention surrounding the complaint, she said.
She stressed that confidence in the numbers inside the committee should not be read as proof of prejudice but as a reflection of how lawmakers assessed the complaints, the annexes, and the threshold issues already taken up by the panel.
“The congressmen have read the complaints and believe we are correct in declaring them sufficient in form and substance, and that the affidavits or annexes to the complaints show probable cause. Of course, like we said, we will still have to go through the Committee on Justice hearing to declare probable cause,” she explained.
She clarified that having the numbers does not mean the committee has already closed the case or prejudged the outcome, since the process still requires hearings where the panel must formally determine whether probable cause exists before any recommendation can advance.
Questions over the credibility of detained witness Ramil Madriaga should be settled in the proper forum, not through premature attacks meant to discredit testimony, Zamora added.
“Our stand at the Committee on Justice regarding allegations that Madriaga has questionable character… That’s why we are conducting a hearing,” she said.
Zamora further said the impeachment complaint against the President contains more evidence than what was available last year.
She said the complaint now carries more supporting materials than before even as the alleged impeachable offenses being cited remain largely similar to those raised earlier.
“In fact, there are more pieces of evidence now since there are additional attachments. So we saw the impeachable offenses last year; they were similar to the impeachable offenses mentioned this year. And like I assured my colleagues, there is a case,” she said.
She acknowledged that impeachment inevitably unfolds in a political environment, especially with the next elections drawing closer, but argued that members of the committee are gradually seeing that the process is anchored on a real cause and not on empty accusations or speculation.
“There are times when some would ask if we have evidence. Is there a point? Is there a case? And I said, like before, the cases are the same,” she said.
On questions of whether the House panel could invoke an exception to the bank secrecy law while handling the impeachment proceedings, Zamora took the position that the exemption may apply to the committee’s work as well, even if the law does not state that point with complete clarity.
At the same time, she pushed back against the expected objections from the Vice President’s lawyers, saying it was natural for counsel to attack the process and question the panel’s earlier ruling that the complaints were sufficient in form and in substance.
