AT THE April 15 impeachment hearing before the House Committee on Justice involving Vice President Sara Duterte, two phrases kept surfacing: “probing questions” and “subpoena.” By the time the hearing ended, both had lost whatever seriousness they were supposed to carry.
What the public saw was not disciplined constitutional process, but a spectacle dressed up as one. Chairperson Congw. Gerville R. Luistro repeatedly stressed that there should be no probing questions, insisting the House was merely clarifying the complaints and not conducting a trial. Reports on the hearing likewise noted that the committee limited questioning on that basis.
The Performance of Restraint
But that restraint looked more theatrical than real.
The irony is glaring. On the one hand, the committee invoked limits, decorum, and supposed fidelity to the scope of the impeachment complaints.
On the other, it entertained and adopted matters that appear to go beyond the four corners of those complaints, including the supplemental affidavit of Ramil Madriaga, which introduced fresh allegations and became one of the hearing’s headline moments.
News reports after the hearing themselves framed Madriaga’s supplemental affidavit as containing bombshell allegations that deepened the case narrative.
That is the problem. A constitutional body tasked to assess a complaint cannot pretend to be neutral while quietly helping build it.
It cannot lecture everyone about the limits of inquiry while simultaneously expanding the factual universe of the case through materials not originally anchored in the complaint. That is not constitutional discipline. That is institutional convenience.
From Clarification to Construction
The same problem is even clearer in the subpoena issued to the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC). The House panel approved a subpoena directing AMLC to produce covered and suspicious transaction reports reported by any banks involving Vice President Duterte or her husband, Manases Carpio, from 2006 to 2025.
That is not precision. That is a dragnet.
Philippine jurisprudence does not allow subpoena power to be used as a roving license to rummage for something useful.
It is elementary that a subpoena duces tecum must contain a reasonable description of the documents demanded and that those documents must appear prima facie relevant. Jurisprudence further teaches that a subpoena of this nature is unreasonable, oppressive, lacking in relevance, and in clear violation of due process and fair play.
The Supreme Court has long treated broad and unspecified demands with suspicion, precisely because compulsory process is not a tool for fishing expeditions. It is certainly not a license to trawl through private records in the hope that something incriminating might emerge.
A Dragnet, Not Due Process
And that is what makes this hearing so troubling. If the House is only supposed to determine whether the complaint and its supporting materials are sufficient, then it has no business using subpoena power to search outside the complaint for missing evidence, omitted transactions, or new accusations.
The moment it does that, it stops being an evaluator of an impeachment complaint and becomes its investigator, architect, and repairman.
Once subpoenas become nets cast into the sea of private records, and “probing questions” become a slogan invoked only when convenient, this is no longer impeachment in service of truth. It is power fishing for a catch—a grave affront to due process and to the fundamental law of the land.