Chiz on presiding over impeach trial: Just rumor

MANILA, Philippines —  It’s just “rumor,” Sen. Francis Escudero said yesterday of persistent reports that he is being eyed as presiding officer in the impeachment court that will try Vice President Sara Duterte.

“Kung ano man ‘yung sinasabi ngayon, lahat yan puro haka-haka (Whatever is being said around, it’s all hearsay),” he said in his podcast.

He said this may have stemmed from the fact that there are only five senators, including him, who are lawyers and considered appropriate and most capable of presiding over an impeachment trial.

What is important, he said, is that whoever may be elected as presiding officer should be fair or be perceived as fair.

“You must not only be impartial, you must also appear to be impartial. So being actually one is not enough. The perception, observation of the people also matter,” he said.

It was Sen. Panfilo Lacson who first brought up the idea of Escudero being chosen as presiding officer in the impeachment trial.

Lacson had said there was a consensus among members of the majority bloc favoring the election of Escudero as presiding officer, citing his being a lawyer and his experience in the impeachment process.

He was previously the presiding officer in the first impeachment case against the Vice President in 2025 when he was still Senate president, but his stint was marred by controversies, particularly over the interpretation of the term “forthwith” under Article XI, Section 4 of the 1987 Constitution.

The Supreme Court would later rule that the case against Duterte violated the one-year bar on impeachment proceedings, prompting the Senate to archive the complaints. The new impeachment case against Duterte is now in the pre-trial conference stage.

Escudero, meanwhile, also denied having received millions of pesos in cash kept in suitcases from then congressman now fugitive from justice Zaldy Co.

He said it was “impossible” for him to receive money from Co as they had long been not on good terms.

“That’s not true because congressman Co and I were (magkagalit) in conflict for a long time. Many people know about it,” Escudero said, adding that Co’s former bodyguards who leveled the accusation even got his address wrong.

He surmised that Co’s former bodyguards and their handlers linked him to the issue after he joined the Senate majority following his surprise appearance at the Senate session on June 3, when senators elected then Senate pro tempore Sherwin Gatchalian, effectively making him Senate President replacing Alan Peter Cayetano. “