Legal gobbledygook

Three days into the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, a lawyer told me that the proceedings were causing him undue stress so he stopped watching.

He’s not the only one who tuned out. There’s been a lot of yawning and impatience in the peanut gallery.

The trial by the Senate impeachment court has become as ponderous as the trials in regular judicial courts. This has been aggravated by the participation of the senator-judges, who are not only raising legal points but also injecting politics and inanities into the proceedings.

Sen. Bam Aquino echoed the sentiment of many when he appealed to both camps to cut the legal nitpicking and get straight to the point.

I don’t know if this is possible, since I’ve sat through so many trial court proceedings, and the first week of the impeachment trial reminded me of them.

Those first three days of the impeachment trial gave the nation an idea of why our legal system is notoriously slow.

I once wasted an entire working day to attend a court hearing where my presence was needed simply to affirm that a news report was published in The Philippine STAR – when the actual hard copy, the news clipping was right there in court.

This snail-paced legal system is one of the reasons for the popularity of extrajudicial shortcuts to law enforcement. Our justice system is broken – hopelessly inefficient, politicized and corrupt.

I don’t know if it will ever be fixed in my lifetime. Lawyers thrive in the inefficiency. It ensures that their services are needed (at astronomical costs), to cut through the legal gobbledygook.

In the impeachment trial, politics and dynastic considerations aggravate the legal confusion.

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The yawning and impatience in the peanut gallery were also due to the fact that the nation had already seen the incriminating videos of the VP’s ranting to have President Marcos, his wife Liza and cousin Martin Romualdez killed in case Duterte herself would be murdered.

No one from the feuding camps ever questioned the authenticity of those videos, so people were befuddled by the legal jousting at the Senate trial.

As usual, people are dealing with the tediousness through jokes. The latest: after the VP channeled horror movie star Chuckie in her video rant, here comes Chuckie Jr.: the Senate’s Drama Queen, prone to shrill outbursts when she’s stressed.

Some members of the House prosecution team said they picked Article IV of the Articles of Impeachment to be the first case to present against VP Duterte because they deemed it to be the easiest to successfully prosecute.

After all, Duterte herself provided the damning evidence: her public declaration on Nov. 23, 2024, during an online media briefing, about the “kill” contract. Three days later, on Nov. 26, the VP reiterated what she said, in a media interview.

On the third day of the impeachment trial, the defense insisted that no grave threat was committed, and that the VP merely “drew the line in the sand” after she and her family also received threats under a so-called Oplan Romanov. For most of the public, this detail about the plot code-named Romanov was new.

The defense has yet to present evidence to corroborate the existence of this alleged plot against the VP, her family and aides. No complaint related to it was filed and no investigation carried out, as the VP’s camp reportedly refused to cooperate with probers.

But even if the “kill” statements might be deemed by the senator-judges as grave threats, the defense argued that these did not constitute high crimes warranting impeachment.

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As counted by Bam Aquino, nine hours over three trial days were spent to establish the authenticity of the video clips and the expertise of the person tasked to do so at the National Bureau of Investigation.

This is a microcosm of our country: bogged down in legalese, drowning in laws that can’t be properly enforced, and packed with lawyers who thrive in gobbledygook and inordinate delay that sustain their practice.

There wouldn’t be this public impatience if the prosecution had started with the Articles of Impeachment involving details that previous congressional probes failed to reveal. These are related to the accusations of misuse of confidential funds, and amassing of ill-gotten wealth by the VP and her husband Mans Carpio.

Maybe the prosecutors want to save the most interesting (and explosive) issues for last.

There are non-Duterte supporters who can’t believe the VP’s kill threat was real, seeing it merely as wishful thinking and hyperbole. But because a Duterte hurled the warning, even emphasizing that it was “no joke, no joke,” the government thought the threat could be real and couldn’t be taken lightly.

Presiding officer Chiz Escudero has promised a livelier pace in the trial, after the birth pains in the first week.

Yesterday, Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian also said the chamber is studying ways to speed up the trial.

The wait for new details (in between naps) could be more bearable, if the lawyers would heed Senator Bam’s appeal for everyone to get straight to the point.