ASEAN Beat | Politics | Southeast Asia

Philippine Lawmakers Vote to Impeach Vice President Sara Duterte For Second Time

The 47-year-old is accused of a range of crimes, including corruption, misuse of government funds, and plotting to kill her former ally, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Philippine President Sara Duterte visits the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Davao City, Philippines, May 3, 2026.

The Philippines’ House of Representatives has voted overwhelmingly to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte, making her the first politician in the country’s history to be impeached twice.

In a vote yesterday, 257 lawmakers in the 318-seat House voted to indict Duterte, Rappler reported, exceeding the 215 House members who approved her first impeachment last year. Twenty-five House members opposed Duterte’s impeachment, while nine abstained.

The impeachment will now move to the Senate for a trial that will determine the 47-year-old’s political fate. If successfully impeached – this requires a two-thirds vote – she will be removed from office and banned from politics for life.

The vote took place on the basis of two impeachment complaints, filed in February, which allege that Duterte misused 612.5 million pesos ($10 million) in confidential funds in her capacity as vice president and education secretary. It also aims at her unexplained wealth, bribery when she was education secretary, and her public threat to have Marcos, his wife, and the president’s cousin Martin Romualdez, the then-House speaker, assassinated in the event of her own killing.

Yesterday’s vote came a week after a House Justice Committee unanimously approved a report that found probable cause in the two complaints against the vice president.

Following the vote, Duterte’s legal team said that it was “fully prepared to defend the vice president before the Senate,” and that it would be “incumbent upon the prosecution to discharge the burden of proof.”

With the vote, Duterte has become the first Philippine official to be impeached twice. She was previously impeached in February 2025, for a similar suite of transgressions, including “violation of the........

© The Diplomat