The just-released Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey reports that 66% of Filipinos agree that Vice President (VP) Sara Duterte must address the impeachment charges to answer all allegations of corruption against her. This finding is encouraging and indicates that a majority of the public supports an institutional process to ascertain her guilt or innocence.
Governance matters
The impeachment trial of VP Sara and holding her accountable for any misuse of confidential funds, bribery and corruption, and threatening violence against other public officials is a pivotal moment with huge implications for economic development. This trial tests the current quality of governance and serves as the most important process today to shape this for the better.
Philippine governance is deeply flawed and this shows in the economy as chronic poverty amid grossly worsening inequality. Traditional politicians (trapos) prioritize personal ambition, dynastic power, and the profits of oligarchs and foreign capital over the public interest.
These issues are reflected in neglectful economic policy and practice. Corruption takes away funds for essential services like health, education and housing. Corruption takes away funds for supporting farmers, rural infrastructure, and domestic industrial enterprises. Trapos, bankrolled by the rich and powerful, skew economic policies towards their elite profits instead of the broader public good.
Impeachment is the most politically visible element of the supposed system of checks and balances on the country’s highest officials. Holding the vice president accountable through a credible, transparent and fair impeachment process will show that no public official is above the Constitution or the public interest. It will send a clear signal that public funds cannot be treated as personal property.
VP Sara is specifically accused of misusing Php612.5 million in confidential and intelligence funds as vice president and concurrently as education secretary. A conclusion on these may also provide insight into how she might have used another Php2.7 billion in similar funds that were under her control as Davao City mayor from 2016 to 2022.
Corruption erodes services
If the vice president is not impeached and held accountable for any wrongdoing, it will send a damaging message: that the government protects corrupt and abusive officials. It will tell the public that those in power can freely use their positions for personal ambition, greed and gain, and that the government does not represent their interests, values or needs.
Every peso stolen or misused means poor schooling, inadequate healthcare, miserable housing, and withheld ayuda. But we lose more than money when we don’t impeach or punish corrupt leaders. No accountability means more impunity, self-serving governance, and deeper poverty.
This creates a vicious cycle: politicians will keep abusing public money and power, people will keep seeing government as detached from them and not get involved, and corrupt politicians and economic elites will remain in control. The Philippines will remain poor, backward and underdeveloped even as a handful prosper from public resources and the national economy.
Letting the vice president get away with misusing hundreds of millions of pesos will be telling every government official to go ahead and take their cut without consequences. A corrupt and self-serving government can’t build a strong and democratic economy, which explains the worsening hunger, poverty and joblessness today.
Impeachment and other anti-corruption measures are vital because real economic development for the majority of Filipinos, and not just a corrupt few or wealthy elites, needs a capable and trustworthy government. When Congress and other institutions fail to check corrupt abuse of power, the economy suffers from misused budgets, poor social services, weak tax collections, and disadvantaged small businesses. The rich and powerful are unaffected or even benefit, while tens of millions of poor and middle-class Filipinos suffer economic backwardness.
