Manila, Philippines – The vice chairperson of the House committee on justice that is reviewing the two impeachment complaints against President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. has hinted at the likelihood of a revision of the House rules on the impeachment proceedings in wake of the Supreme Court (SC) ruling.
Bukidnon 2nd district Rep. Jonathan Keith Flores, vice chairperson of the panel, said the chamber could still abide by the decision without losing its co-equal authority.
“The new House Rules on Impeachment must be carefully worded,” Flores said in a statement.
“I fully understand the intent of the Supreme Court on infusing due process into the impeachment process… We will then work out the precise statutory construction necessary to revise the impeachment rules. We were prepared for this,” he added.
His colleagues at the House of Representatives – mostly from the minority – had hit the SC decision as a “judicial overreach” as it “redefined” what counted as the “initiation” of impeachment.
In its Thursday decision that upheld a July 2025 ruling, the high tribunal said the one-year rule on the filing of complaints seeking to remove Vice President Sara Duterte began when the House leadership did not place in its order of business those three suits within the required 10 session days, effectively archiving them, and instead voted to impeach her based on a fourth verified impeachment complaint. The court said the move violated the right to due process and the one-year rule that dictated the frequency by which an impeachable official can be sued.
Mamamayang Liberal Rep. Leila de Lima, a lawyer and former justice secretary, said the court crossed from interpretation of the Constitution into legislation when the magistrates “rewrote” the impeachment rules.
“The Supreme Court has not merely reviewed the House’s compliance with clear constitutional commands – it has rewritten the operating manual for impeachment initiation. It has supplied new rules, new timelines, and new consequences that are nowhere found in the text,” De Lima said in a statement on Friday, Jan. 30.
“The effect is to discipline the procedure that the Constitution left for Congress to decide. This sets a very dangerous precedent that weakens separation of powers by transforming impeachment from a political safeguard into a judicially managed process, contrary to the design and spirit of the Constitution,” she said.
Another member of the justice panel, Manila Rep. Joel Chua, said a discussion on the new impeachment rules will be underway soon.
“As a member of the House prosecution team and of the House committee on justice, I will confer with my colleagues on how best to revise the Rules on Impeachment as we deem fit and in ways that comply with the Supreme Court decision,” Chua said in a statement.
The committee will tackle the form and substance of the two impeachment complaints against the president on Monday, Feb. 2.
