Philippine lawmakers voted on Monday by a wide margin to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte for the second time, setting the stage for a Senate trial that could end her 2028 presidential bid.
The articles of impeachment accuse the daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte of graft, corruption, bribery and an alleged assassination plot against former ally President Ferdinand Marcos.
Under the Philippine constitution, a guilty verdict in the Senate would see Duterte removed and barred from elected office for life.
"This is no longer just about politics. This is about conscience, duty and the future of our nation," Representative Bienvenido Abante said immediately after the vote.
"This is not about 2028, this is not about political alliances, this is about whether we still believe that no one is above the law."
Lawmakers voted by a margin of 257 to 25 -- with nine abstentions -- to impeach Duterte. The House had earlier announced 255 votes in favour and 26 against.
The articles focus on misappropriation of public funds, unexplained assets, bribery of public officials, and an alleged death threat against Marcos and other family members.
The threat against Marcos stemmed from a late-night news briefing in which Duterte claimed to have hired an assassin to kill the president should he have her cut down first.
She later said her comments had been misinterpreted.
Duterte's defence counsel said in a statement after Monday's vote that the burden of proof lay with her accusers.
"We are fully prepared to defend the Vice President before the Senate sitting as an Impeachment Court," it said.
Longtime Duterte ally Senator Alan Peter Cayetano was elected as the new Senate president minutes before Monday's House impeachment vote began.
That unexpected Senate vote seemingly put the upper chamber firmly in the hands of the vice president's camp.
Duterte and Marcos have been engaged in a high-stakes political brawl that erupted within weeks of their 2022 presidential election victory, when the vice president was denied her desired defence portfolio and instead named education secretary.
The feud exploded into open warfare in 2025 with her first impeachment and the subsequent arrest and transfer of her father to face charges at the International Criminal Court at the Hague tied to his deadly drug war.
Monday marked the second time the vice president has been impeached on mostly the same charges.
In the Senate trial that followed her first impeachment, senators donned robes and convened a court on live television only to send the case back to the House in a decision one lawmaker called a "functional dismissal".
The upper chamber is now even more solidly stacked in Duterte's favour after a slate of candidates loyal to her outperformed expectations in May 2025's mid-term elections, winning five of 12 open seats.
Dennis Coronacion, chair of the political science department at Manila's University of Santo Tomas, told AFP before Cayetano's election he believed an acquittal was "highly possible" given the Senate's new makeup.
However, the impeachment process and presentation of evidence against her were likely to take a toll on Duterte's presidential hopes all the same, Coronacion said.
"I'm expecting that by the next survey cycle, we'll see the change in the public perception about the vice president. Filipinos really hate corruption," he said, noting that Duterte had declined to appear and defend herself at House committee meetings.
Student Matthew Silverio joined about 150 others outside the House to protest against corruption.
"She took millions and millions of pesos from the Filipino people, from the young people, from us students," the 23-year-old said of Duterte's time as education secretary.
"Only... those who are willingly blind themselves will not impeach Sara Duterte."
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