So painfully slow has been the Senate’s action on Vice President Sara Duterte's impeachment case that the constitutional one-year ban on such additional cases could lapse before anything significant happens.

House impeachment prosecutor, Manila 3rd district Rep. Joel Chua said this in jest Monday, July 14, as he and his fellow congressmen once again--and like a broken record at this point--appealed to the Senate to begin Duterte's impeachment trial.

But there's an impasse of sorts between the two legislative chambers, one that is drowned in the technicalities of how they think the impeachment case should proceed. Add to this the Duterte camp's petition before the Supreme Court (SC) to have the case dismissed outright.

One such technical issue in the one-year bar rule or prohibition rule, which--depending on which side you believe--may or may have invalidated the fourth impeachment against the lady official.

"Eh sa delay po na nangyayari sa Senado parang aabot na rin tayo sa one-year bar rule (With the delay that's happening at the Senate, it's likely we will reach the one-year bar rule)," Chua told House reporters in a chance interview.

For the House prosecutors, this one-year bar rule will expire on Feb. 5, 2026. This is because the fourth impeachment complaint against Duterte was transmitted to the Senate with over one-third of House members' signatures last Feb. 5, and therefore was the trigger date.

But Vice President Duterte and her allies point out that three separate filings of impeachment raps happened in December 2024, which on the surface seems violative of the rule.

The big catch was that House Secretary General Reginald Velasco never referred the three complaints to the Committee on Justice, which would have been the normal trigger for the ban. As for the fourth complaint, it took the constitutional shortcut route and was directly transmitted by Velasco to the Senate after 215 solons signed it.

Chua, a lawyer, said the senator-judges shouldn't wait for the SC to resolve the petition, since there's no temporary restraining order (TRO) on the impeachment proceedings. That means they should put Duterte on trial immediately.

"Yun nga po ang nireresolba ngayon sa SC kung nagkaroon ng violation. But then again tayo po ay malakas po ang paniniwala natin na wala pong violation na nagawa at lahat naman po ng proseso ay nasunod sa pagpa-file po ng articles of impeachment,” he said.

(That’s exactly what the SC is currently resolving, whether a violation occurred or not. But then again, we firmly believe that no violation was committed and that all procedures were properly followed in the filing of the articles of impeachment.)