Philippine lawmakers set to vote on impeaching Vice President Sara Duterte

A House vote on Sara Duterte’s impeachment has become a fight over who controls the Philippines’ next political succession, with the outcome set to shape both the Marcos presidency and the Duterte family’s hold on power.

Lawmakers were expected to decide whether to send the vice president to the Senate for trial, after the House Committee on Justice voted 53-0 on April 29 to find probable cause and transmit the consolidated complaints to the plenary. At least 106 votes, or one-third of the 318-member House of Representatives, would be enough to move the case forward. Some Philippine media reports said as many as 215 lawmakers could back impeachment, a margin that would signal a broad political rupture.

The revived complaint was narrowed to four grounds: alleged misuse of confidential funds, bribery, unexplained wealth, and failure to fully disclose assets in her Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth. Sara Duterte has denied wrongdoing, while her lawyers have called the petition defective and described it as a fishing expedition. If the House clears the threshold, the Senate of the Philippines would sit as jurors. Conviction could remove Duterte from office and bar her from politics.

The stakes reach well beyond a legal proceeding. Sara Duterte once campaigned on the same ticket as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., but that alliance has since collapsed, leaving both camps to compete for the succession after Marcos. Weakening Duterte would strengthen Marcos-aligned forces and other rivals who want to prevent the Duterte family from regrouping around a 2028 presidential run. Sara Duterte has been widely viewed as a leading contender for that race, making the impeachment fight as much about the next presidency as about the current one.

The legal fight is also tied to a previous clash with the Supreme Court of the Philippines. On July 25, 2025, the court struck down an earlier impeachment attempt on procedural grounds and said any new complaint could only be filed starting February 6, 2026, under the constitutional one-year bar. The latest effort came after that deadline passed, and supporters say the House has now built a cleaner case. The broader Duterte family is already under pressure: Rodrigo Duterte was arrested in March 2025 and is being processed for an International Criminal Court case over the drug war of his 2016-2022 presidency.

Outside Congress in Manila on May 11, groups including Akbayan and Makabayan rallied and chanted for impeachment, turning the vote into a public pressure campaign as well as a parliamentary one. For a country that is a key U.S. security partner in Asia, the outcome will help determine whether power remains concentrated around Marcos or is pulled back toward the Duterte camp.