The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) has asked the Supreme Court (SC) to dismiss the petitions that challenge the legality of the ongoing impeachment case—referred to by petitioners as ‘mini-trial’—against Vice President Sara Duterte at the House committee on justice (HCJ).
In an 85-page comment-opposition dated April 23, the OSG also asked the SC to deny all the injunctive relief prayed for by the petitioners.
The SC has consolidated two petitions—one filed by the Vice President herself and the other filed by a group of lawyers led by Israelito Torreon.
While the case is pending, both petitions are also asking the SC to stop the proceedings at the House committee on justice.
However, the OSG argued that the impeachment process is a ‘political question’ beyond the reach of judicial review. The government’s lead counsel maintained that the House of Representatives holds the exclusive constitutional mandate to initiate impeachment and determine the sufficiency of such complaints.
‘The findings of sufficiency in form and substance of the subject impeachment complaints, and all actions emanating therefrom involve non-justiciable issues, as they are political questions in the purest sense,’ the OSG said, emphasizing that the judiciary should not ‘pry into the internal workings’ of a coequal branch.
In asking that the proceedings in Congress be declared void from the beginning, both petitions said that it had already become a ‘case-building’ and ‘fishing expedition’ to salvage the complaints, which they said were mere conjunctions, and hearsay.
Likewise, the petitioners questioned the ‘double-standard’ applied by the HCJ in handling the impeachment complaints against President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. and the Vice President.
They noted that the HCJ applied a strict threshold standard in evaluating the impeachment complaints against Marcos, which led to its immediate dismissal.
But the OSG, led by Solicitor General Darlene Berberabe, said the SC can only exercise its judicial review when there is grave abuse of discretion or violation of basic rights, to which there was none in the present case.
In fact, the OSG said, ‘the stage of determining probable cause, such as preliminary investigation or the current status of the impeachment proceeding against Vice President Duterte, the regulation of the right to cross-examination to the extent that questions are required to be coursed through the investigating authority cannot be considered an affront to due process.’
The OSG pointed out that the HCJ in fact invited the Vice President to appear and give her said. During the hearings, she was even called several times.
‘The Committee on Justice was not remiss in affording Vice President Duterte her right to due process, from the time she was required by said Committee to file a Verified Answer and until she was invited to attend the hearings on the said impeachment complaints.’
The OSG added: ‘Thus, in refusing to participate in the hearings despite due notice, petitioner Vice President Duterte cannot now claim that she was denied due process.’
The petitions were labeled as ‘not ripe for judicial determination,’ with the OSG arguing they are an attempt to avoid accountability before the constitutional process even concludes.
Vice President Duterte filed a ‘Consolidated Verified Answer Ad Cautelam’ on March 16, 2026, before taking the matter to the Supreme Court. The OSG maintains that the House committee on justice is not conducting a ‘fishing expedition’ but is performing its constitutional duty to determine probable cause.