CONSTITUTIONAL CRISES & UPRISINGS

Birth pangs of a nation in search of peace 

Bobby M. Tuazon Director for Policy Studies Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)

An unprecedented constitutional and accountability crisis has engulfed the nation. The crisis is predicated by the ongoing historic Senate impeachment trial of the Republic’s Vice President Sara Duterte. Compounding the situation, the Philippines is in a state of high polarization as the Marcos-Sara Duterte "UniTeam" alliance has completely shattered into open institutional warfare.

In principle, a constitutional crisis takes place when the government cannot function because laws or the constitution fail to solve a major fight between leaders or branches of government. Public officials break the rules, or the legal system stops working – potentially creating anarchy or civilian uprising. If prolonged with no institutional healing, the state machinery will succumb to collapse or paralysis.

The public political rift between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Duterte began in January 2024 due to public insults, disputes over foreign policy, and fights over government money.

The deep political rift has had an impact on governance and administration. The alliance’s breakdown ended working cohesion at the highest levels of the executive branch, marked by Duterte's resignation from her Cabinet post as education secretary. It has diverted legislative and administrative focus away from primary governance, resulting in public spats over budget allocations, confidential funds, and weak national responses to major scandals like flood control anomalies.

The bitter fallout has torn apart members of Congress, strained relations with the Senate, and dragged down public approval and trust ratings for key administration officials as both political camps position themselves for the 2028 elections.

The impeachment proceedings and related legal challenges involving Vice President Sara Duterte center primarily on Article XI of the 1987 Philippine Constitution, which governs accountability of public officers. The Article outlines the impeachable offenses, which include culpable violation of the Constitution, treason, bribery, graft and corruption, other high crimes, and betrayal of public trust.

Right now, the Senate’s pre-trial impeachment of Duterte is deliberating on Article I regarding the alleged misuse of ₱612.5 million in confidential funds. State auditors have testified to massive irregularities, including the expenditure of ₱125 million in just 11 days.

What’s more, the Supreme Court dealt the vice president a major blow by unanimously rejecting her petition to block the proceedings.

Beyond impeachment, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) filed a grave threats complaint against the vice president for alleged remarks targeting by assassination President Marcos Jr., his wife, and Marcos’ cousin former House Speaker Martin Romualdez. But Romualdez himself is defending his own camp against corruption allegations and a bribery case being pursued by the Ombudsman.

The Marcos administration was also inundated by a flood control infrastructure corruption scandal. Severe weather reignited a massive public outcry surrounding the systemic plunder of unprogrammed state funds intended for flood control projects overseen by key lawmakers.

Similarly, high-profile investigations have enmeshed parts of the Senate amid a preliminary investigation by the Ombudsman into multi-billion-peso solar projects linked to Sen. Loren Legarda and her family.

System breakdowns

The current constitutional crisis involving key officials of the administration is not unprecedented. In the Philippines' post-war political history, there have been three major periods leading to severe constitutional crises or system breakdowns - in 1972, 1986, and 2001.

In September 1972, President Ferdinand E. Marcos – father of the current president - declared Martial Law, suspended the 1935 Constitution, closed Congress, and allowed Marcos to rule by decree until a disputed 1973 Constitution was pushed through. In 1986, a fierce legitimacy dispute arose after a fraudulent snap election where both Marcos and Corazon Aquino claimed victory. The controversy led to a coup attempt and popular uprising – People Power Revolution or EDSA I – which saw Marcos fleeing to the US and the establishment of a temporary Freedom Constitution.

According to human rights groups like London-based Amnesty International, around 34,000 people were tortured, 70,000 were imprisoned, and over 3,200 (6,000 according to independent rights groups) were killed by state agents during the Marcos dictatorship era 1972-1986.

In 2001, mass protests and the withdrawal of military support forced President Joseph Estrada from office amid plunder charges, leading to a constitutional debate over whether he had resigned or was merely incapacitated. The Supreme Court (SC) resolved the impasse by declaring the presidency vacant, allowing Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to take the oath as presidential successor.

Arroyo ruled for 10 years overcoming massive protests that called for her ouster over election fraud allegations. Arrested in November 2011, she was held at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City on charges of electoral sabotage but released on bail in July 2012. 

The SC’s constitutional challenges

The high court has not been spared of constitutional challenges. The SC has repeatedly faced severe institutional standoffs that stoked widespread fears of a constitutional crisis - defined as a sharp conflict between co-equal branches of government over the limits of their powers - though actual systemic breakdowns were averted each time as political actors ultimately deferred to judicial authority or settled outcomes within legal frames.

In 2003, Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. weathered an impeachment. Within the same year, a second impeachment complaint was filed against Davide Jr. and several associate justices, funded by controversial congressional allocations. But the high court declared the second complaint unconstitutional, ruling it violated the constitutional one-year bar on initiating multiple impeachment complaints against the same official.

Eight years later, Chief Justice Renato Corona was impeached by the House and tried by the Senate sitting as an impeachment court for failure to accurately disclose his Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN). A standoff took place: The high court stopped the Senate impeachment court from compelling testimony and records regarding Corona's strict foreign currency (dollar) bank accounts. Senators vehemently argued that the judiciary had no jurisdiction over the Senate during an impeachment trial and threatened to ignore the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO).

The Senate eventually avoided a direct collision course when Corona publicly waived his bank secrecy rights, and the upper chamber subsequently convicted him. Corona chose not to appeal his ouster to the high court to prevent a full-blown constitutional crisis.

Corona died five years after his removal as chief justice.

In 2018, the solicitor-general filed a quo warranto petition to nullify Maria Lourdes Sereno’s appointment as Chief Justice, bypassing the constitutionally outlined impeachment process. The SC voted to grant the petition and oust Sereno. The decision was accepted and executed, setting a controversial legal precedent rather than sparking outright institutional warfare.

Systemic rule of oligarchic families

Rather than a constitutional crisis, the long rule of political families in the Philippines is a systemic political problem. Political power is monopolized by a few families as wealth, land ownership, and elections have been tied together since the Spanish and American colonial eras. In the country’s personality-driven elections, powerful groups easily win votes by using family money, local government control, and name recall.

The 1987 Constitution bans political dynasties in theory, but Congress has never passed the needed law to stop them.

The top 10 political family dynasties in the Philippines are: Marcos-Romualdez, Dutertes, Villars, Singsons (whose Chinese ancestry dates back to 1893), Cayetanos, Estrada/Ejercito, Binays, Revillas, Arroyos, and Remullas.

Frequent constitutional crises do not automatically mean a democracy has completely failed. But they often signal deep institutional stress and democratic decay, as seen in the Philippines. Philippine democracy is in form only and lacks substance.Persistent institutional conflict in the Philippines reflects a "defective" or eroding democracy rather than a dead one. Elections continue, but the system suffers from systemic flaws.

Despite institutional flaws, however, the government keeps on functioning: courts, the president, and Congress still do their normal jobs. Elections still happen and power transfers by vote.

A threatening “perfect storm” lurks in the shadows of Philippine society – hammered together by stages of constitutional crisis, intense election contestations, and threats of civilian uprisings.

Every constitutional crisis, however, has been resolved by the people rising in their millions. The political system has historical roots of revolutions, uprisings, unresolved civil wars – throughout the country. Moro secessionist struggles in southern Philippines have been settled giving the Moro people autonomy.

Agreements with the central government have yet to bear fruit, though.

The social volcano remains pregnant with civilian unrest owing to systemic poverty, corruption, poor public services and frequent constitutional crises. #