The filing of two impeachment complaints against Vice President Sara Duterte on Monday, Feb. 2 came as a surprise to some since it occurred earlier than expected.

This is because the general public had been told repeatedly that new impeachment complaints against Duterte could be filed beginning only on Feb. 6, when the one-year prohibition rule had lapsed.

But the Supreme Court (SC) En Banc's final decision last Jan.28 on Duterte's 19th Congress impeachment complaint changed all that, according to former Bayana Muna Party-list Rep. Neri Colmenares.

Colmenares, one of the 45 filers of the first impeachment complaint lodged against Duterte Monday, explained what happened in a press conference. He said that like everyone else, the Makabayan bloc thought that Feb. 5, 2025 was the reckoning date, which made Feb. 6, 2026 as the date for the filing of new raps against the lady official.

"Yun din ang akala namin sa original decision ng Korte Suprema, nabanggit Feb. 6. Pero dito sa decision nila sa motion for reconsideration [ng House of Representatives], nag-iba ang bilang nila ng session days, or at least yun ang basa namin," said the lawyer.

(That was also our understanding of the original SC decision, which mentioned Feb. 6. But in their ruling on the motion for reconsideration filed by the House of Representatives, they changed how session days are counted—or at least that is how we read it.)

Colmenares said the SC counted session days as "calendar days when Congress held plenary sessions".

The ripple effect of the magistrates' interpretation is that the reckoning date was moved earlier from Feb. 5, 2025 to Jan. 14, 2025. This led to the earlier expiration of the one-year bar rule.

"Kaya ngayon, Jan. 15 nag lapse ang one-year bar. Sa totoo lang, Jan. 16 actually pwede na pala [mag-file]. Kaya lang late naman na namin nakita yung desisyon, the other day lang (So now, the one‑year bar lapsed on Jan. 15. In fact, by Jan. 16 it was already possible to file. The problem was we only saw the decision late, just the other day)," Colmenares said

"At ito ngayon yung pinaka-opportune moment para sa amin para i-file yun (And this moment is the most opportune time for us to file it)," the former multi-term congressman said, referring to Monday.

"So we're following the Supreme Court decision, we're following the Constitution and the rules. Kaya in this case, tamang-tama ang pag-file nitong complaint na ito (That's why in this case, we chose the perfect time to file this complaint). It is within the SC decision and after the one-year bar," he said.

Bayan President Renato Reyes Jr., a fellow complainant of Colmenares' bared that they got hold of the complaint only last Thursday, Jan. 29. He said it took them up to Saturday to reach a decision, which was to file the new complaint against the Vice President on Monday.

In Congress (House and Senate), plenary session are only held from Mondays to Wednesday. But this doesn't necessarily mean one-to-one correspondence to calendar days; if a plenary session gets suspended instead of adjourned by the presiding officer, then the session day could theoretically get extended for several session days.

The Feb. 5, 2025 date is significant because this was the date that the House directly forwarded to the Senate the impeachment complaint against Duterte that was signed by 215 congressmen.

The SC, in its July 25, 2025 ruling declared the particular complaint unconstitutional. Instead, it recognized three earlier complaints filed against the lady official through the Office of the House Secretary General, the earliest of which was filed on Dec. 2, 2024.

Under House rules, the secretary general must immediately transmit such complaints to the Office of the House Speaker. The Speaker's office would then have 10 session days to submit the complaints to the Committee on Rules for plenary referral.