MANILA — Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte showed no signs of backing down Tuesday as she briefly appeared at the Senate ahead of the second day of her impeachment trial, telling reporters she would emerge from the proceedings beaten but unbroken.
“In this bloodbath and bludgeoning, I will be bloodied but unbowed,” Duterte said to reporters before meeting with her legal team. She wore a green polo shirt, a color widely associated with her political identity.
The high-profile trial carries enormous stakes — its outcome could determine whether Duterte is eligible to seek the presidency in 2028. Rather than attend the proceedings herself, she allowed her attorneys to represent her inside the Senate chamber.
Duterte is the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, who is currently being held in The Hague where he faces a separate trial related to his administration’s deadly anti-drug campaign.
On Tuesday, prosecutors shifted their focus to allegations that the vice president made violent threats against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the first lady, and a former House Speaker. Prosecutor Lorenz Defensor argued that these statements went far beyond ordinary criminal behavior and rose to the level of a constitutional violation.
To support their case, prosecutors called a National Bureau of Investigation official as their first witness to verify the authenticity of video recordings capturing Duterte making the alleged remarks.
One video from October 2024 showed Duterte expressing a desire to behead Marcos. A second clip, recorded at a November 2024 press conference, showed her claiming she had arranged for an assassin to kill Marcos, the first lady, and a former House Speaker if anything were to happen to her.
In the video, Duterte is heard saying: “I have talked to a person. I said, ‘if I get killed, go kill BBM (Marcos), (First Lady) Liza Araneta and (House Speaker) Martin Romualdez.’ No joke, no joke. I said, ‘do not stop until you kill them.’”
Defensor stressed to the senator-judges that the alleged threats carried special significance given who made them. “What makes these threats especially sinister is that they do not come from an ordinary citizen, but from the vice president herself,” he said. “Her words were neither accidental nor taken out of context. They were uttered publicly with the intention to be taken seriously.”
The charges related to the alleged threats are just one part of a broader impeachment complaint against Duterte. She also faces accusations of misusing public funds, accumulating unexplained wealth, bribery, and corruption. Duterte has denied all wrongdoing and characterized the impeachment proceedings as politically driven.
Marcos and Duterte — both members of two of the Philippines’ most prominent political families — ran together and won the 2022 election, but their once-united alliance eventually fractured into a deep and public rivalry.
Duterte’s defense team has argued that the impeachment effort is an attempt to undo the will of more than 32 million Filipino voters who elected her to the vice presidency.
