Impeached Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte says she won’t resign

UPDATED at 11:30 a.m. ET on 2025-02-07

Sara Duterte radiated confidence and smiled as the Philippine vice president addressed reporters, saying she would survive a political storm from her impeachment this week for alleged corruption and other crimes.

In her first public appearance after the House of Representatives voted to impeach her on Wednesday, Duterte said she would not resign as VP and her lawyers were preparing her defense for an impeachment trial expected to begin in the Senate in June.

“In the past few days many have asked for my reaction or comment and how I feel about the issue of my impeachment,” Duterte told a press briefing on Friday that aired live on television. “The only thing I can say at this point is: God save the Philippines.”

The vice president is accused of violating the constitution, graft and corruption, plotting to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., betrayal of public trust and other high crimes. Among these were the alleged misuse of U.S. $10.6 million of funds and corruption when she served as education secretary, and unexplained wealth.

She said it was “too far off” to entertain the idea of resigning to avoid being removed via a Senate trial.

“It is more painful to be left behind by a boyfriend or girlfriend than to have been impeached by the House of Representatives,” Duterte said.

Duterte again denied that she had made an assassination threat against Marcos, his spouse and the leader of the House of Representatives. 

During an online press briefing in November, Duterte told reporters that she had hired someone to eliminate the three in case she were targeted in an assassination plot. She has since tried to walk back her statement, saying she had presented the scenario as a hypothetical.

“I did not make an assassination threat to the president,” she reiterated on Friday.

Asked if she felt betrayed by House members who had overwhelmingly signed the impeachment against her, Duterte said: “Do I feel betrayed? Actually, I don’t have feelings about it because I really don’t have any politician friends. I don’t move in the circle of politicians … to say that I have a close personal relationship with them, there is none. Maybe that’s why it was also easy for them to make that decision (about the) impeachment.”

But Duterte, 46, said she had not surveyed who among the 24-member Senate would sit as judges and who among them would vote for her. More than half of those are politicians who directly benefited during the presidency of her father, including his former aide and chief of police.

The vice president is also known to enjoy a close working dynamic with Sen. Imee Marcos, the president’s older sister.

“I have not counted the number of votes in the Senate, so we are not there yet,” she said. “The legal team is still in the preparation of the defense.”

Duterte had also told her father, firebrand ex-leader Rodrigo Duterte – himself a former prosecutor – not to worry about her fate.

She said she had sent him a message through his assistant. “I think I said [to him], ‘Everything will be alright.’ The ex-president simply replied with a video of him singing a popular 1970s song called “MacArthur’s Park,” she said.

While her lawyers can handle the impeachment case, Duterte said the ex-president, being a lawyer himself, was welcome to give his input in her defense.

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On Thursday, Marcos told reporters that he believed the Senate must carry out its mandate, although an impeachment trial would distract the government from its work.

The president – Duterte’s running mate in the 2022 national elections – sought to distance himself from the move, pointing out that Congress was a separate branch of government that his office does not influence, even though the lower house is led by Romualdez, his cousin, and eldest son.

“We don’t have a formal role in the entire impeachment process. The executive has no formal role,” Marcos said, adding that the senators “have their own way of doing things and that’s what they will implement.”

“From this point on, I’m just a very interested observer,” Marcos said. “We leave it to Congress, now, specifically the Senate, to exercise their own wisdom.”

A total of 215 lawmakers – more than two-thirds of the 306 member-House – endorsed the complaint against Duterte – enough to impeach her and send it on to the Senate. 

The Senate will then have to convene into an impeachment tribunal and two-thirds of its members are needed to convict and remove the accused from office.

On Thursday, Senate President Francis Escudero, who will act as the presiding officer of the impeachment court, said the body could only begin on June 2, or a month after new senators would have been elected. The Philippines goes to mid-term polls on May 12.

Gerard Carreon in Manila contributed to this report.