Sawt Falasteen - Philippine Senate opens trial to decide VP Duterte's political future

Thousands of security personnel were deployed, while protesters briefly clashed with riot shield-wielding police outside the Senate building.

The vice president did not attend the initial three-hour session, in which both sides gave opening statements but no witnesses were called. The rest of the trial could take months.

Duterte said earlier in the day that her decision to "appear through counsel rather than testify personally does not diminish accountability or imply a lack of transparency".

The House of Representatives impeached the 48-year-old daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte on May 11 on allegations of graft, corruption, bribery and an alleged assassination plot against one-time ally President Ferdinand Marcos.

But only a guilty verdict by two-thirds of a bitterly divided 24-seat Senate can strip her of the vice presidency and permanently bar her from elected office.

On Monday, lead defence counsel Sheila Sison slammed the proceedings as the result of a "vast fishing expedition" and an exercise in partisan politics.

"The clear objective behind these allegations is the removal of a vice president elected by more than 32 million Filipinos," she said.

Duterte still enjoys public support, with a May survey showing her as the 2028 front-runner and 51 percent of respondents saying they planned to vote for her.

The articles of impeachment focus on misappropriation of public funds, unexplained assets, bribery of public officials and the alleged death threat against Marcos and other family members.

- Senate in turmoil -

Hours before the trial began, a senator who would have served as one of its judges became the second Duterte Senate ally arrested on corruption charges in just over a month.

Senator Rodante Marcoleta's decision to turn himself in was the latest in a series of institutional shocks at the Senate.

In May, Marcoleta and 12 others lawmakers aligned with Duterte took control of the Senate barely an hour before the House impeachment vote, a move that was later reversed amid a boycott by the vice president's allies.

One of them, Senator Ronald Dela Rosa -- enforcer of her father's bloody drug crackdown -- briefly took refuge in the Senate building as officers attempted to execute an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant against him.

He disappeared after a tense standoff that saw Senate security guards fire shots.

Another Duterte ally, Jose "Jinggoy" Estrada, was arrested on June 1 for allegedly receiving kickbacks worth more than 573 million pesos (nearly $33 million) over a flood control project.

While prosecutors have argued that only physically present senators should be counted against the constitution's two-thirds threshold, an impeachment court spokesman said Monday that conviction would require "an absolute minimum of 16 affirmative votes".

Even if the formula were adjusted, Cleve Arguelles of pollster WR Numero had told AFP he did not believe the numbers are there to convict.

"I think it's quite clear that there is a very difficult pathway to conviction," he said.

- Dynasties at stake -

While President Marcos has taken care to distance himself from the impeachment process, it has unfolded against the backdrop of a blistering political brawl between the Marcos and Duterte dynasties.

A long-simmering feud exploded into open warfare last year with Duterte's first impeachment -- later overturned by the Supreme Court -- and the subsequent arrest and transfer of her father to face crimes against humanity charges at the ICC.

"All of these factions are fighting for their political futures," WR Numero's Arguelles said.

"For the Marcos administration... they have to make sure that the next administration won't go after them."

And even if Duterte avoids conviction, she is unlikely to emerge unscathed after months of public scrutiny that could cost her "at the very least" the support of independent voters, Arguelles said.

D.Khalil--SF-PST