*Dr. Rodolfo John Ortiz Teope, PhD, EdD, DM
I remember one morning when I lined up at a government office long before the doors opened. I was not there as an ordinary citizen, but as someone who works with public institutions—law enforcement, public safety, education. I had taught rules. I had enforced rules. I believed in rules. I brought every document I was told to bring. I waited patiently. When my turn finally came, the clerk looked at the papers, paused, and gently said I lacked one requirement—something never mentioned, something invisible until that moment. The transaction stopped. No argument, no explanation, no appeal. Balik na lang po kayo.
I walked out feeling something heavier than inconvenience. I felt how power hides behind procedure. I felt how truth can be postponed—not because it is wrong, but because it is inconvenient.
That feeling returned when I listened to Tito Sotto III, Senate President of the Philippines, react to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte. When he called it a “sad day for constitutional law,” I did not hear a politician posturing. I heard a voice that recognized a familiar pattern: accountability reaching the door of power, only to be turned away because the paperwork was not perfect.
I say this not as a partisan, but as an educator, a public-safety professional, and a political analyst. In my classrooms and briefings, I have always taught that accountability is not about punishment. It is about answering. In uniformed service, when something goes wrong, the first duty is to explain—clearly, publicly, honestly. We do not fear investigation if we believe we acted within our mandate. What we fear, and what we fight against, is a culture where procedure becomes a refuge from truth.
This is why Senate President Sotto’s warning that impeachment is becoming an “impossible dream” feels painfully real. For ordinary citizens, the law already feels like a maze. But we accept its complexity because we believe that at the highest levels of power, accountability remains reachable. We believe that when allegations are serious—when public funds, public trust, or abuse of authority are at stake—there will at least be a public reckoning.
When impeachment is stopped not by evidence, not by debate, not by acquittal, but by technicalities—by disputed dates, filing mechanics, or alleged notice defects—the message sent to the public is devastating. It is not that the allegations lack substance. It is that substance no longer matters if procedure can be used skillfully enough. In public safety, I have seen what this does to institutions. It teaches people to look for loopholes instead of answers, shields instead of responsibility.
Legal experts will, of course, challenge Sotto’s position. Some will say the Court merely applied doctrine. Others will insist that procedure is the backbone of due process. As someone who teaches governance and respects the rule of law, I do not dismiss these arguments lightly. But what Sotto is pointing to goes far beyond black-letter law.
Impeachment is not an ordinary case. It is not a trial in the usual sense. It is a constitutional, political, and moral mechanism meant to translate the people’s trust into accountability. When judicial interpretation reshapes that mechanism in ways that make accountability nearly unreachable, the issue stops being purely legal. It becomes democratic. It becomes ethical. It becomes human.
The real question is no longer whether every procedural step was immaculate. The real question is whether the Constitution’s spirit—that no one is beyond questioning—has been quietly sacrificed on the altar of technical perfection. In this light, Sotto’s critique is not anti-law. It is pro-democracy. Law without accountability becomes ritual. Procedure without purpose becomes obstruction.
I have always told my students that the House of Representatives is not supposed to be graceful. It is supposed to be loud, emotional, sometimes uncomfortable—because it carries the raw voice of the people. It is where anger, suspicion, and hope are supposed to find expression. When the Supreme Court of the Philippines narrows the House’s power through technical gates that only lawyers can navigate, the injury is not just institutional. It is personal. It is felt by voters who begin to wonder whether their voices still matter.
Courts are unelected, and that is by design. Their authority rests on restraint, clarity, and public trust. When interpretation begins to feel like intervention, trust erodes quietly. People do not protest immediately. They grow tired. They disengage. They stop believing.
From years in public-safety education, I know this truth as well: once people believe they are insulated from accountability, behavior changes. Ethics weaken. Risk-taking increases. Responsibility fades. That is why concerns about judicial overreach are not attacks on the judiciary. They are defenses of balance. When interpretation slides into legislation—when requirements appear that were never clearly written—the system begins to create a protected class. Officials shielded not by innocence, but by technical mastery.
In such a system, public officials no longer fear the judgment of the people. They fear only procedural missteps. And with enough resources, even that fear disappears.
As an educator, I teach substance over shortcuts. As a law enforcement and public safety researcher, I teach responsibility over excuses. As a political analyst, I know that democracy does not survive on perfect procedures alone. It survives on good faith.
To stand with Senate President Tito Sotto is to insist that serious allegations deserve daylight. A trial is not a conviction. It is a conversation with the nation. By ending impeachment on technical grounds, the Court did not answer the people’s questions. It postponed them—buried beneath legal language many citizens will never understand.
That may satisfy form. But democracy asks for more than form. It asks for courage.
And from where I stand—having taught those entrusted with authority, weapons, and lives—when accountability becomes an “impossible dream,” it is not the dream that fails.
It is the system that has forgotten whom it was built to serve.
*About the author:
