The primordial crime of bribery of the impeachment

IT’S a travesty, a deliberate collective amnesia that reeks of intellectual dishonesty, and it has unfolded right before our eyes since the Supreme Court struck down on July 25 the Marcos-Romualdez project to prevent Vice President Sara Duterte from running for the presidency in 2028.

The so-called constitutional experts, those self-appointed guardians of the Philippine legal order, have conveniently forgotten — most likely deliberately buried — the most egregious crime at the heart of the impeachment saga against Duterte: the brazen bribery of congressmen to secure their signatures on that constitutionally infirm complaint.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room. On July 29, 2025, Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco, a seasoned lawmaker with no small amount of political savvy, dropped a bombshell that should have shaken the foundations of Malacañang and Congress. He alleged, with the weight of insider knowledge, that most, if not all, of the 240 congressmen who signed the impeachment complaint against Duterte received a staggering P150 million bribe for their districts from the funds intended to alleviate poverty among the country’s poorest.

This wasn’t a casual remark tossed into a press conference; it was a deliberate accusation from a man who has navigated the murky waters of Philippine politics for decades, including his stint as campaign manager for Marcos’ electoral organization. The math alone is mind-boggling: P150 million multiplied by 215 yields a cool P32.25 billion, a sum that could fund half a dozen national infrastructure projects — or, more cynically, line the pockets of a corrupt coalition.

Much earlier, just days after the impeachment vote, House Deputy Speaker Duke Frasco described with brutal honesty how the system operates.

All this, while legal “experts” and establishment media picked apart procedural technicalities, blithely ignoring the scale of corruption required to animate the process in the first place.

Romualdez

It is Speaker Martin Romualdez, his six-man core of operators in Congress, his secretary general Reginald Velasco and even all 240 congressmen who signed the complaint who should be impeached, for trampling on our laws. (25 more congressmen, realizing that the bribery scheme was real, rushed to sign the complaint after it was delivered to the Senate — which Senate President Francis Escudero, however, refused to accept.)

Bribery — direct or indirect, cash or projects — is a core impeachable offense under both the Constitution and our anti-corruption laws. It wasn’t Sara Duterte whose office was being used as a prize for political prostitution — it was Congress, its majority for sale to the highest and most powerful bidder.

Lawmakers did not act as independent guardians of the constitutional order, but as vassals in a system of bribery. The Supreme Court, rightly recognizing the rotten foundations, had no choice but to dismiss the complaint. What should haunt us as a country is not only that this episode occurred, but that it did so in a fog of denial, and with the tacit blessing of many of those who are supposed to keep our democracy clean.

The great betrayal is not only in the act but also in the cover-up. Legal and academic elites — “experts” who dominate our largely pro-Marcos mainstream media — focused obsessively on procedure while refusing to see the bribery that poisoned the process. By reducing constitutional democracy to a game of loopholes and deadlines, they let true criminality slip by, thus enabling the very establishment that has always profited from the country’s dysfunction.

Reckoning

Until the Filipino public demands a real reckoning — starting with an honest, public investigation into Tiangco and Frasco’s claims — this conspiracy of silence will fester, and the spectacle of a democracy for sale will not abate.

But where’s the outrage? Where are the sanctimonious editorials from the Inquirer or the pontifications of constitutional “experts” like former Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio, the UP’s Teddy Te, the Yellow ideologue Christian Monsod? They’ve been quick to dissect the legal merits of Duterte’s impeachment — filed on Dec. 2, 2024, by Leila de Lima and a gaggle of activists, followed by two more complaints in early December — yet they’ve turned a blind eye to the primordial crime that birthed this process.

Eyewitness accounts, whispered in the corridors of power and now surfacing, paint a damning picture. A former congressional staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal, recounted a late-night meeting in early December 2024 at a Makati hotel where envelopes stuffed with cash were distributed to lawmakers. “I saw it with my own eyes,” the staffer told a trusted colleague, who later relayed to this columnist. “They called it ‘incentive funding’ for the greater good, but it was bribery plain and simple.”

Another eyewitness, a low-level House employee with access to budget deliberations, described a similar scene during a “small committee” session — yes, the same shadowy group Tiangco has demanded should be disbanded. This employee, interviewed off the record in July 2025, claimed that representatives were pressured to sign the complaint, with assurances that their districts would receive “special allocations” totaling hundreds of millions. “They didn’t even read the complaint,” the employee said. “It was all about the money.”

These accounts, while not yet admissible in a court of law, align with Tiangco’s public assertion and suggest a coordinated effort to manipulate the impeachment process from its inception.

Amnesia

So, why the collective amnesia? The answer lies in the political chessboard. The impeachment, which culminated in a House vote of 215-0 on Feb. 5, 2025, was merely a weapon wielded by the Marcos-Romualdez faction to neutralize Sara Duterte, whose popularity is almost certain to thwart their 2028 ambitions to perpetuate their clan in power forever.

The “experts” — many of whom owe their careers to establishment patronage — have a vested interest in preserving this narrative. To acknowledge the bribery would be to unravel the legitimacy of the entire process, exposing the House majority as a bought-and-paid-for rubber stamp. Instead, they focus on procedural minutiae—whether the complaint meets the one-year bar under Article XI, Section 3(4) of the Constitution — while ignoring the moral rot at its core.

The 2025 budget deliberations, with their opaque “small committee,” echo this pattern, and Tiangco’s revelation is a rare crack in the facade. Eyewitnesses corroborate a culture of impunity, where bribery is the grease that keeps the legislative machine humming. Yet, the constitutional “experts” remain mute, their silence a tacit endorsement of this corruption.

The P32.25 billion bribe fund, if true, dwarfs the P612.5 million in confidential funds Duterte is accused of malversing, exposing the hypocrisy of her accusers. The Senate trial, which would have begun in July 2025 if the Supreme Court had not invalidated the impeachment, would likely have glossed over this, focusing on Duterte’s alleged sins while shielding the bribe-givers.

Eyewitness

The bribery of congressmen to agree to the impeachment complaint is the crime here, a fact that eyewitness accounts substantiate but which the elite refuse to confront. Until the public demands accountability — starting with an investigation into Tiangco and Frasco’s claims — the constitutional “experts” will continue their charade, protecting a system that thrives on corruption.

The first phase of such an investigation could be easily done, if Speaker Romualdez agrees to it or is forced — by the Supreme Court — to do so: Reveal the names of congressmen to whom disbursements of the dole-out funds were made that were used as bribe money from December to February, when the impeachment project was being undertaken.

The Senate’s blue ribbon committee, I believe, has the authority to undertake this. It should summon a non-congressman, House Secretary-General Reginald Velasco — Romualdez’s lieutenant who actually undertook the operations — to spill the beans. If he does not, he should be thrown in jail for the life of the 20th Congress.

How can we claim that we have a democracy when the House speaker — who really only represents a tiny constituency in a backward district in Leyte, with just 30,000 voters — can use taxpayers’ money to try to remove from office the vice president, elected by 32 million Filipinos, the biggest ever votes cast for an elected official?

---

Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao

X: @bobitiglao

Archives: www.rigobertotiglao.com

Book orders: www.rigobertotiglao.com/shop

The post The primordial crime of bribery of the impeachment first appeared on Rigoberto Tiglao.

The primordial crime of bribery of the impeachment
Source: Breaking News PH