Impeachment prosecutors said Sept. 27 that they may drop the bribery charge against Vice President Sara Duterte — not because the evidence fell apart, but because the Senate's own calendar is about to run out on them.
"Our goal is to wrap up our presentation of evidence before the break. So if there isn't much time left … that could be a major factor for us not to present evidence with respect to bribery anymore," prosecution spokesperson Benjamin Tolosa Jr. told reporters, according to INQUIRER.net. The "break" is the Senate's shift to deliberating the proposed ₱7.2-trillion 2027 national budget, expected to dominate the chamber from mid-October through mid-November.
Put plainly: one of the four charges against a sitting vice president may be shelved because Congress has a budget to pass, not because prosecutors examined it and found it wanting. That is a different thing from an acquittal, and a different thing from a conviction — it's a charge left in limbo, available for the history books but never tested in court.
Four charges, an uneven finish line
The impeachment complaint accuses Duterte of misusing confidential funds, amassing unexplained wealth, bribing Department of Education officials, and threatening President Marcos, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and former House Speaker Martin Romualdez. Tolosa's remarks suggest the bribery allegation is the most likely casualty of the timeline — but he also indicated prosecutors are separately weighing whether to present the complete set of financial records behind the unexplained-wealth charge, or a trimmed-down version, raising the question of whether more than one count could end up getting the abbreviated treatment.
Prosecutors are racing to close their evidence presentation before the budget break, resume afterward, and finish the trial before the country pivots to the 2028 presidential election. That leaves a narrow window for four separate allegations against the second-highest official in the land — and Tolosa's comments suggest the schedule, not the strength of the case, is now doing the pruning.
Duterte has denied all the allegations, calling the impeachment effort "politically motivated." Her camp has not commented specifically on the possibility that the bribery charge could be dropped.
Context
The trial has already produced its own procedural drama. On Sept. 23, the Senate impeachment court ruled that only participating senator-judges — not all 24 — count toward the two-thirds threshold needed to convict, cutting the effective bar from 16 votes to 14 with four senators absent, a reversal of the court's own fixed-16 position from July. Testimony from Duterte's brother, Davao City Mayor Sebastian "Baste" Duterte, over ₱14.32 million in city contracts awarded to a company his sister lists as a personal asset, has also been pushed to Sept. 28-30. Whether the bribery charge survives long enough to matter may now hinge less on either of those fights than on how much of October the budget debate eats up.
What's still unknown
Prosecutors have not said definitively that the bribery charge will be dropped, only that it is a live possibility given the timeline. Nor have they specified how much of the unexplained-wealth financial documentation they intend to present in full. Duterte's legal team has not responded to the specific scheduling rationale prosecutors have offered.
Sources
- Kenneth Christiane Basilio, "Sara Duterte trial: Bribery charge may be dropped over 2027 budget talks," INQUIRER.net, Sept. 27, 2026 — https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/2312414/sara-duterte-trial-bribery-charge-may-be-dropped-over-2027-budget-talks