“MARK my word: There will be no trial—in my assessment—there will be no trial in the
impeachment court.” So declared four-time former Senate President Franklin
Drilon in his interview with Atty. Karen Jimeno on At The Front, aired February
26, 2025, on the Bilyonaryo News Channel.
Drilon, speaking from deep institutional experience, dissected the legal and political
barriers to a possible impeachment trial against Vice President Sara Duterte.
From jurisdictional issues between Congresses to the lack of a special session
and the apparent absence of 16 Senate votes needed for conviction, the seasoned
senator laid it out bluntly: “There are no numbers in the Senate to convict
Sara.”
What Drilon emphasized was strategic foresight. “If I were Vice President Sara, I
would immediately question the jurisdiction of the 20th Congress,” he said,
noting that the complaint was filed in the 19th Congress, and trial proceedings
would fall into the term of the next.
He warned that once a trial begins, it enters unpredictable terrain: “You’ll never
know what will happen in the course of the trial. You’ll never know what comes
out as evidence, and therefore, you’ll never know how the senators will vote.”
In other words, the trial, once set in motion, takes on a life of its own—a
political and legal storm no one fully controls.
I remember Atty. Karen Jimeno from the 2012 impeachment of Chief Justice Renato
Corona. She was the poised young spokesperson and defense counsel who stood at
the frontline of a historic trial. I happened to see her at a Muji outlet just about
a month ago. It was a chance encounter that brought back a flood of
memories—not only of Corona, my classmate at UST, but of the moment I saw him
nearly collapse during his trial. His hypoglycemic spell outside the Session
Hall remains vivid in my memory.
I,too, have witnessed every impeachment since 1987. And now, a third looms. But
as Drilon says with the certainty of someone who’s been there: “My fearless
forecast is that there will be no impeachment trial—that this will be dismissed
on a jurisdictional issue.”
