The vice president’s seat at her own trial stayed empty. When the Philippine Senate convened as an impeachment court at 2 p.m. on Monday, 6 July 2026, Sara Duterte sent her lawyers instead — a calculated absence on the opening day of a proceeding that could strip her of office and bar her from ever holding another one.
Outside the chamber, the security posture said more than any opening statement. More than 6,000 police officers, including anti-riot squads, were deployed around the Senate, where about 400 anti-Duterte demonstrators converged chanting “convict Sara now,” the Associated Press reported. The trial will run for 92 days, according to a pretrial plan seen by the AP.
The charges — amassing unexplained wealth, misusing confidential state funds, and publicly threatening to have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife Liza Araneta-Marcos and former House Speaker Martin Romualdez assassinated — carry a penalty heavier than removal. Conviction means permanent disqualification from public office, which would kill her declared run for the presidency in mid-2028, when Marcos’s single six-year term expires. She denies all of the allegations and has called the case politically motivated. Sixteen of the 24 senator-judges must vote to convict.
Marcos, whose allies in the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly last month to impeach his estranged vice president, spent Sunday publicly nudging her to show up in person.
“The accused can answer directly, not through secondary channels, not through the lawyers. If the accused can respond directly, of course, the process will become clearer and easier.”
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., quoted by GMA News
What makes this trial stranger than the textbook version is the condition of the jury itself. Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, part of the Senate bloc backing the Duterte family, was arrested and detained last month on a nonbailable plunder charge tied to a flood-control bribery scandal. A second pro-Duterte senator, Rodante Marcoleta, was arrested Monday — the very day the trial opened — on a nonbailable plunder charge over large campaign donations he allegedly failed to declare. A third, Ronald dela Rosa, has gone into hiding since the International Criminal Court issued a warrant naming him a co-perpetrator in the Duterte-era drug war killings. Three likely sympathetic votes are, in other words, in a cell, in custody, or underground. All three deny wrongdoing, and Duterte’s supporters read the timing as persecution designed to secure her conviction.
The family backdrop is impossible to separate from the courtroom. The vice president’s father, 81-year-old former President Rodrigo Duterte, has been detained at The Hague since his arrest last year on ICC orders and is scheduled to face trial on 30 November over alleged crimes against humanity stemming from anti-drug crackdowns that left thousands of mostly poor suspects dead. He has denied authorizing extrajudicial killings. His daughter blames Marcos for the handover — one of the grievances that shattered the alliance that swept them both into office in 2022.
That rupture is geopolitical as much as personal. Marcos has expanded defense engagement with Washington and pushed back against Beijing’s water-cannon tactics in the South China Sea — friction that has spilled into maritime disputes across the region — while the Dutertes cultivated warm ties with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. Even so, Marcos has kept his own channels to Moscow open, pressing Putin at the Kazan summit in June to release 24 detained Filipinos. The vice president, for her part, has drawn criticism for declining to condemn China’s assaults on Filipino forces and fishermen.
Prosecutors are not easing in. Their manifestation lists witnesses for 6–8 July that include NBI-BARMM regional director Jeremy Lotoc, NBI cybercrime senior agent John Mark Calilung, and Capt. Belinda Bello, executive director of the House Legislative Security Bureau — all testifying on Article I, the alleged assassination threat against Marcos, the first lady and Romualdez, according to GMA News.
Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian has promised proceedings explained in layman’s terms, urging Filipinos to watch for themselves. That may be the most honest acknowledgment yet of what this trial actually is: the verdict that matters will be rendered twice, once by 24 senator-judges over the next 92 days, and again by the electorate in 2028. The court’s summons gave Duterte the choice of appearing in person or through counsel. She chose counsel. Whether that distance reads as composure or evasion is now the question hanging over both verdicts.
