After Senate returns articles to House, Torreon asks Supreme Court to dismiss impeachment trial
MANILA, Philippines — Mindanao-based lawyer Israelito Torreon filed a supplementary petition asking the Supreme Court to restrain the Senate from proceeding with the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.
Torreon filed the petition before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, June 11, a day after the Senate returned the articles of impeachment to the House of Representatives. The petition is an additional plea to their petition, which they filed in support of the vice president last February.
“The petitioners respectfully seek the immediate intervention of this Honorable Court to enjoin the Senate of the Philippines from proceeding with the impeachment trial. This Supplemental Petition updates the Court on critical developments since the filing of the original petition and underscores the urgent need for a TRO to prevent irreparable harm and preserve the Vice-President’s constitutional rights pending judicial review of the impeachment process’s validity,” the petition read.
“The impeachment process, while inherently political in nature, must still be guided by the minimum requirements of constitutional due process, legality, and adherence to the Rule of Law,” it added.
Torreon, who is also the lawyer of doomsday preacher Apollo Quiboloy and detained former President Rodrigo Duterte, also asked the high court to declare the impeachment “null and void” due to “defective articles of impeachment.”
He also asked the Supreme Court to order the Senate to prohibit it from permanently proceeding with the impeachment with an invalid complaint.
In this petition, he argued that the impeachment cannot proceed to the 20th Congress due to “legislative discontinuity.”
“The jurisdiction of the Senate sitting as an impeachment court is not perpetual, unbounded, or self-sustaining across different legislative assemblies. It is constitutionally and institutionally contingent upon the continuity of the Senate that received the Articles of Impeachment,” the petition read.
“Any attempt by the 20th Congress to pick up and resume a trial left unresolved by the 19th Congress is an unconstitutional usurpation of jurisdiction, violating the principle of legislative discontinuity and undermining the integrity of the impeachment process,” it added.
The petition also raised that the fourth impeachment complaint failed to meet the requirements of the Constitution.
The supplemental complaint is an attachment to the original complaint that was previously filed by Torreon and 29 other Mindanaoan lawyers.
It could be recalled that they filed the petition the same day Duterte filed a petition assailing the impeachment.
Christian Monsod, a framer of the 1987 Constitution, said that the Supreme Court should rule on the Constitutional issues of the impeachment and not the Senate.
Without the ruling of the high court, Monsod explained that the Senate should still proceed with the proceedings, as mandated by the Constitution.
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