PH-D-04: The Marcos–Duterte Coalition Rupture (2024–2025)

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1. Key Takeaways

  • The 2022 Marcos–Duterte coalition (covered in PH-D-03) ruptured publicly and irreversibly in 2024 and culminated in two structurally consequential events in early 2025: the 3 February 2025 House of Representatives impeachment of Vice-President Sara Z. Duterte-Carpio and the 11 March 2025 arrest of former President Rodrigo R. Duterte at Ninoy Aquino International Airport on an International Criminal Court warrant. Together these events ended what had been, at the moment of its inauguration on 30 June 2022, the largest dynastic alliance in post-EDSA Philippine politics — two political families whose combined electoral base in May 2022 had delivered 31.6 million votes for the presidency and 32.2 million votes for the vice-presidency. The rupture's velocity (from full alliance in mid-2022 to open political opposition by mid-2024 to ICC custody for the alliance's senior figure by March 2025) marked one of the most rapid coalition collapses in the post-1986 record, comparable in pace to the 1998–2001 collapse of the Estrada coalition (covered in PH-C-03) but distinct in substance because the 2024–2025 rupture proceeded through constitutional impeachment and international-criminal-justice channels rather than through extra-electoral street mobilisation.

  • The structural causes of the rupture are best understood in three layers. The proximate layer is the June 2023 controversy over the Office of the Vice-President's confidential funds — a PHP 125 million unprogrammed-funds disbursement to the OVP within eleven days of the FY 2022 General Appropriations Act becoming effective, audited by the Commission on Audit and surfaced in House Appropriations hearings in August–September 2023. The intermediate layer is the consolidation of congressional power under Speaker Martin G. Romualdez (the President's first cousin) through 2023–2024, which produced a House majority sufficiently insulated from Vice-Presidential influence to entertain impeachment. The structural layer is the deeper question of whether the Marcos and Duterte families — each anchored to a distinct regional base (the Marcoses to Ilocos and the Solid North; the Dutertes to Davao and Mindanao) and each carrying a distinct ideological lineage (the Marcoses to martial-law nationalist developmentalism; the Dutertes to Davao-style punitive populism) — could indefinitely co-govern under a single administration. The corpus presents all three layers without arbitrating which is "primary."

  • The June 2023 confidential-funds controversy crystallised the rupture's first publicly visible inflection. On 21 December 2022, less than six months after inauguration, the Office of the President transferred PHP 125 million from the Contingent Fund (unprogrammed appropriations) to the Office of the Vice-President under the rubric of confidential expenses. The transfer was completed within eleven calendar days of the request. The COA Annual Audit Report for FY 2022 documented that PHP 125 million had been liquidated by the OVP within roughly nineteen days of receipt — an unusually rapid liquidation pattern that COA flagged for documentary deficiencies. The September 2023 House Appropriations hearings on the FY 2024 budget surfaced the audit observations publicly, with opposition-aligned legislators (Representatives France Castro, Arlene Brosas, and ACT Teachers' Antonio Tinio, joined by Albay Representative Edcel Lagman) pressing Vice-President Duterte on liquidation documentation. The Vice-President's responses — characterised by her supporters as principled refusal to compromise intelligence sources, characterised by her critics as evasion of constitutional accountability — set the tone for the eighteen-month sequence that followed.

  • The September–October 2023 budget cycle produced the formal removal of confidential and intelligence funds from the FY 2024 OVP and DepEd appropriations. Following sustained House Appropriations and Senate Finance Sub-Committee hearings, the FY 2024 General Appropriations Bill as passed by Congress and signed into law by President Marcos Jr. on 20 December 2023 contained no confidential funds for the Office of the Vice-President and no confidential funds for the Department of Education. The Vice-President had requested PHP 500 million in confidential funds for OVP and PHP 150 million for DepEd in the FY 2024 budget submission; both lines were zeroed. This was the first occasion in the post-EDSA record on which a sitting Vice-President's confidential-fund request was wholly removed by Congress. The removal was procedurally administered by the House Appropriations Committee under Chair Elizaldy Co (Ako Bicol Party-List) and the Senate Finance Sub-Committee under Senator Risa Hontiveros, with the politically decisive votes coming from the Romualdez-aligned House majority.

  • On 19 June 2024, Vice-President Sara Duterte announced her resignation from her concurrent posts as Secretary of Education and as a member of the Marcos cabinet (specifically the Vice-Chairperson role on the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, NTF-ELCAC), while retaining her constitutionally separate elected position as Vice-President of the Republic. The resignation statement, issued at OVP headquarters in Quezon City, cited a sustained pattern of presidential interference, resource constraints imposed on OVP and DepEd, and a determination that her continued cabinet membership had become impossible. President Marcos accepted the resignation the same day and designated Senator Juan Edgardo "Sonny" Angara as Secretary of Education effective 19 July 2024. Sara Duterte's June 2024 resignation was the first cabinet-resignation by a sitting Vice-President in the post-1986 record. Her departure formalised what had been, since at least early 2024, a de facto political separation. The Vice-Presidency itself — a constitutionally elected office whose holder cannot be removed except by impeachment (Article XI, Section 2 of the 1987 Constitution) — was not affected by the cabinet resignation.

  • The August 2024 House Quad Committee was a structurally novel investigatory mechanism, combining four standing committees (Public Order and Safety; Dangerous Drugs; Human Rights; Public Accounts) into a single hearing platform. The Quad Committee was constituted following the August 2024 escalation of public attention on the 2016–2022 war on drugs (covered in PH-D-02), prompted by sustained testimony from former Police Colonel Royina Garma, retired Police General Edilberto Leonardo, and other witnesses describing operational details of the drug-war command structure, including specific allegations against former President Duterte's personal role. The Quad Committee hearings — chaired collectively by Surigao del Norte Representative Robert Ace Barbers (Dangerous Drugs), Manila Representative Bienvenido Abante (Human Rights), Manila Representative Joel Chua (Public Accounts), and Cebu Representative Dan Fernandez (Public Order and Safety) — produced sustained public testimony from October 2024 through early 2025 that complemented the Senate Justice Committee hearings led by Senator Risa Hontiveros. The hearings supplied the underlying evidentiary base for the December 2024 Sara Duterte impeachment complaints.

  • The November–December 2024 sequence produced the rupture's most rhetorically explosive moments. On 23 November 2024, Vice-President Duterte stated in a livestreamed press conference that she had spoken with someone she would identify only as "an assassin" and arranged that, should she be killed, the President, the First Lady, and Speaker Romualdez would also be killed. The statement was characterised by the OVP within hours as conditional and rhetorical; the Marcos camp and the Philippine National Police characterised it as a public threat warranting investigation; the National Bureau of Investigation opened a preliminary inquiry. Within ten days, three impeachment complaints had been filed against Vice-President Duterte: the first on 2 December 2024, the second on 4 December 2024, and the third in February 2025. The complaints alleged variously: misuse of confidential funds (drawing on the COA audit); the November "assassin" statement; cultural-impropriety charges related to the conduct of OVP and DepEd operations; and, in the third complaint, violations of the constitutional oath. The House Committee on Justice consolidated the complaints into a single articles-of-impeachment process in late December 2024 and January 2025.

  • On 3 February 2025, the House Committee on Justice and on 5 February 2025 the plenary House of Representatives voted to transmit the Articles of Impeachment against Vice-President Sara Z. Duterte-Carpio to the Senate for trial. The plenary vote was 215 affirmative, 0 negative, with 99 representatives signing the articles directly (above the one-third constitutional threshold of 102 members required for direct transmittal under Article XI Section 3(4) of the 1987 Constitution, which provides that if at least one-third of the House sign a verified complaint or articles, the same shall be deemed initiated and transmitted to the Senate for trial). The articles enumerated seven principal charges: (1) culpable violation of the Constitution; (2) betrayal of public trust; (3) graft and corruption relating to confidential-funds liquidation; (4) high crimes through the November 2024 "assassin" statement; (5) bribery; (6) failure of constitutional duties; and (7) misuse of public office. The transmittal to the Senate constituted the second impeachment of a sitting Vice-President in post-1986 history (the first being the never-completed 2000 process against Vice-President Joseph Estrada, who had become President; the procedurally relevant precedent is the 2012 impeachment and conviction of Chief Justice Renato Corona).

  • On 11 March 2025, former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte was arrested at Ninoy Aquino International Airport's Terminal 3 upon his return from Hong Kong, executing the International Criminal Court Pre-Trial Chamber I arrest warrant of 7 March 2025 (unsealed at the moment of arrest). Duterte arrived from Hong Kong at approximately 09:25 local time on Philippine Airlines flight PR301. Bureau of Immigration, Department of the Interior and Local Government, Department of Justice, and Philippine National Police personnel coordinated the arrest in the arrivals processing area; an INTERPOL Red Notice or Diffusion had been transmitted in advance. The arrest warrant covered crimes against humanity for murder committed in connection with the Davao Death Squad (1988–2016) and the war on drugs (2016 onwards) during the period of Philippine ICC membership (1 November 2011 – 16 March 2019). On 11 March 2025, Duterte was transferred from NAIA to Villamor Air Base and held there pending surrender arrangements. On 12 March 2025, he was flown out of the Philippines on a chartered aircraft; on 13 March 2025, the aircraft arrived at Rotterdam–The Hague Airport and Duterte was transferred to ICC Detention Centre custody at Scheveningen. His Initial Appearance before Pre-Trial Chamber I occurred on 14 March 2025 by video link from the Detention Centre, covered in detail in PH-D-02.

  • The Marcos administration's operational cooperation with the ICC was a sharp departure from the 2022–2023 stance and constitutes one of the most consequential policy reversals of the post-2022 period. From the moment of his inauguration in June 2022 through at least early 2024, President Marcos Jr. had maintained the Duterte-administration position that the Philippines, having withdrawn from the Rome Statute effective 17 March 2019, was no longer subject to ICC jurisdiction and would not cooperate with ICC proceedings. The Department of Justice public position through 2023 was that any ICC requests would be evaluated through INTERPOL diffusion channels rather than direct ICC channels. The 11 March 2025 arrest reflected a policy reversal whose precise inflection date is contested: the Marcos camp characterises the cooperation as the operation of independent INTERPOL channels obligating Philippine law-enforcement compliance; the Duterte camp characterises it as a political decision timed to the impeachment fight. Section 11's three-account analysis develops both framings without arbitrating.

  • The 12 May 2025 mid-term elections, conducted nine weeks after the ICC arrest and roughly fourteen weeks after the House impeachment vote, produced a reshaped Senate of substantial relevance to the impending Sara Duterte impeachment trial. Twelve of twenty-four Senate seats were contested. The Marcos-aligned Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas slate won six seats; the Duterte-aligned PDP-Laban and allied slates won five seats; one seat went to a candidate characterised in the press as independent-leaning. The resulting Senate composition, when seated on 30 June 2025, included approximately ten senators classified by most observers as Marcos-aligned, approximately seven as Duterte-aligned, and the remainder as independent or shifting. The Senate's role as the impeachment court (Article XI, Section 3(6) of the 1987 Constitution) required a two-thirds vote (sixteen of twenty-four sitting senators) to convict. The arithmetic of conviction therefore depended on the alignment of the marginal six to eight senators. Section 10 examines this in detail.

  • The post-arrest Duterte family political response combined three strategies running in parallel. The first was a sustained legal challenge to the ICC arrest through Philippine domestic courts (multiple petitions filed at the Supreme Court in March–May 2025) and at the ICC itself (jurisdictional challenges and admissibility motions filed by Duterte's defence team through 2025–2026). The second was the political mobilisation of the Duterte base through rallies, social-media campaigns, and the assertion of victim-of-political-persecution framing. The third was the strategic positioning of the Duterte dynasty's remaining elected figures — Senators Christopher "Bong" Go (Duterte's longtime aide) and Ronald "Bato" Dela Rosa (PNP Chief 2016–2018), Vice-President Sara Duterte, Davao City Mayor Sebastian "Baste" Duterte (Rodrigo's youngest son), and former Davao Representative Paolo "Pulong" Duterte (Rodrigo's eldest son) — for the impeachment fight, the 2025 mid-term campaigns, and the 2028 presidential succession. The dynasty's electoral resilience in the May 2025 mid-terms, particularly in Mindanao, established that the ICC arrest had not destroyed the Duterte political base.

  • The three principal contested framings of the 2024–2025 rupture are (a) coalition-rupture causation, (b) ICC arrest legitimacy, and (c) 2025 mid-term electoral implications. On causation, a structural-dynastic account locates the rupture in the inevitable competition between two equally ambitious political families with non-overlapping regional bases; a Romualdez-faction account attributes the rupture to the consolidation of congressional power under Speaker Romualdez and his crowding-out of Duterte influence; a Marcos-strategic account credits the President with a deliberate strategy of constraining the Vice-President to prevent her from becoming the 2028 frontrunner. On the ICC arrest, a rule-of-law framing characterises the arrest as the operation of independent international and domestic legal process; a political-instrumentalisation framing characterises it as a co-timed political weapon deployed against a coalition partner; a justice-for-victims framing emphasises the accountability the arrest delivers for drug-war victims (covered in PH-D-02). On the 2025 mid-terms, a Marcos-dominance reading credits the President with consolidating congressional and senatorial control; a Duterte-resilience reading emphasises the family's surviving electoral base in Mindanao and in the national party-list lists; an anti-dynastic reading observes that both family coalitions performed below their 2022 peaks. Section 11 develops each account in parallel.

2. The 2022 Coalition Recapitulated and the Structural Tensions of 2022–2023

The May 2022 election (covered at length in PH-D-03) returned the Marcos and Duterte families to the two highest elected offices in the Philippine state. Ferdinand "Bongbong" Romualdez Marcos Jr. won the presidency with 31,629,783 votes, 58.77 percent of valid votes cast, and Sara Zimmerman Duterte-Carpio won the vice-presidency with 32,208,417 votes, 61.53 percent. The two were inaugurated on 30 June 2022 at the National Museum of the Philippines and at the Quirino Grandstand respectively (Vice-Presidential inaugurations have historically been held separately under Philippine practice). On the same day, the President issued the appointment papers naming the Vice-President as Secretary of Education, executing what had been announced during the campaign as the Vice-President's concurrent cabinet assignment.

The concurrent VP-cabinet arrangement was not constitutionally unusual — Vice-Presidents had held cabinet positions in prior administrations, including Teofisto Guingona Jr. as Foreign Secretary under Arroyo, Jejomar Binay as Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council Chair under Aquino III, and Leni Robredo as Housing Secretary briefly under Duterte before her June 2017 resignation. But the Sara Duterte assignment to Education was distinct in two respects. First, the Department of Education is the largest single budget item in the Philippine national government, with an FY 2022 appropriation of approximately PHP 631 billion ([TBD-VERIFY: exact FY 2022 DepEd appropriation figure across the General Appropriations Act and supplemental issuances]). The portfolio commands roughly one in four pesos of recurring expenditure, oversees the country's largest workforce of approximately 870,000 teachers and support personnel, and operates a network of over 47,000 public schools. Second, the political symbolism of a Duterte controlling the national curriculum at the moment of a Marcos family restoration carried real weight, particularly regarding the treatment of martial-law history in K-12 instruction (covered in part in PH-B-03 and PH-D-03).

The first cabinet (sworn in between 30 June and August 2022) reflected the UniTeam alliance's negotiated allocation. The Marcos camp controlled the economic-policy core: Benjamin Diokno (Finance), Arsenio Balisacan (Socioeconomic Planning, heading NEDA), Felipe Medalla (Bangko Sentral Governor, holdover from Duterte), and later Ralph Recto (Finance from January 2024 after Diokno moved to BSP). The Duterte-aligned figures occupied security and operational portfolios: Carlito Galvez Jr. (Officer-in-Charge then Secretary, National Defense), Jose "Jonvic" Remulla (later Interior and Local Government from late 2024 after a stint at Justice), and Sara Duterte herself at Education and as Vice-Chair of NTF-ELCAC. The Department of Justice was assigned to Jesus Crispin Remulla, a Marcos-leaning Cavite-based political operator. The Department of Interior and Local Government went to Benjamin Abalos Jr., a Marcos campaign manager. The Department of Foreign Affairs was assigned to Enrique Manalo, a career foreign-service officer continuing in the role he had held in acting capacity under Duterte's final months. The cabinet structure thus distributed influence across the two factions but reserved fiscal and economic command for the Marcos side.

Tensions appeared early in the partnership. The first publicly reported friction concerned the Maharlika Investment Fund legislative push (covered in PH-E-03), which proceeded through the House of Representatives in December 2022 under the sponsorship of Speaker Martin Romualdez (the President's first cousin) and Albay Representative Joey Salceda. Vice-President Duterte was conspicuously absent from the Malacañang ceremonial events promoting the bill, and her public statements on the Fund were carefully neutral rather than supportive. The Maharlika legislation, signed by the President on 18 July 2023 as Republic Act No. 11954, was the Marcos administration's signature first-year economic initiative; its passage without active VP endorsement signalled an early divergence in priorities.

A second early friction concerned the foreign-policy re-pivot to the United States (covered in PH-F-01 and PH-D-03). The April 2023 announcement of four additional EDCA Agreed Locations and the May 2023 Marcos-Biden White House meeting marked a decisive shift from the Duterte-era China tilt. Vice-President Duterte's public statements through this period were strikingly absent of foreign-policy commentary, in marked contrast to her father's voluble China-praising rhetoric during his presidency. Her silence was variously interpreted as deferential, as strategically reserved, or as quietly oppositional. Through 2023, Rodrigo Duterte himself — as a former president — delivered several public statements critical of the Marcos administration's US re-pivot, characterising it as a return to subordinate-ally status and warning of provocation risks with Beijing. The former president's commentary occupied increasing public space through 2023 and 2024, an unusual pattern by Philippine post-presidential convention.

The third structural tension was congressional. Speaker Romualdez consolidated control of the House of Representatives through 2022–2023, building a "supermajority" coalition that combined his Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats vehicle with the Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC), the National Unity Party (NUP), the Nacionalista Party (NP), and substantial blocs of the PDP-Laban and PFP. By mid-2023, the Romualdez majority commanded roughly 280 of 316 House seats — a margin that effectively insulated House action from Vice-Presidential influence. The Senate, with 24 seats, was more evenly distributed: Senate President Juan Miguel "Migz" Zubiri (Bukidnon) led a fragile majority that included both Marcos-aligned and Duterte-aligned senators, and the opposition-leaning bloc of Senators Risa Hontiveros (Akbayan), Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III (PDP-Laban, Pacquiao faction), and Francis "Chiz" Escudero (Nationalist People's Coalition) operated with substantial agenda-setting access. The asymmetry between House supermajority and Senate balance would prove consequential when impeachment proceedings began in late 2024.

3. The Office of the Vice-President Confidential-Funds Controversy (June 2023)

The confidential-funds controversy that crystallised public attention on the rupture's underlying tensions emerged in June 2023, six months after the contested transfer that produced the audit observations. The predicate was a PHP 125 million disbursement from the Office of the President's Contingent Fund to the Office of the Vice-President on 21 December 2022 — eleven days after President Marcos signed the FY 2022 General Appropriations Act and roughly six months after inauguration. The disbursement was processed through the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) under Secretary Amenah Pangandaman and certified by the Commission on Audit (COA) examination team assigned to the OVP.

The Commission on Audit Annual Audit Report on the Office of the Vice-President for FY 2022, released in September 2023, documented the disbursement and noted several observations. The PHP 125 million was characterised in the OVP submission as "confidential expenses" — a category permitted under Philippine government accounting standards (governed by Joint Circular No. 2015-01 issued by the COA, DBM, DILG, GCG, and DND, which governs the use and audit of confidential and intelligence funds across executive-branch units). The COA report observed that the entire PHP 125 million had been liquidated by the OVP within nineteen days of receipt — by 9 January 2023. The unusually rapid liquidation pattern was flagged as inconsistent with typical confidential-expense disbursement patterns, which under standard practice extend across operational quarters. The audit further noted documentary deficiencies in the supporting liquidation papers, though the specific deficiencies could not be elaborated in the public audit report given the confidential nature of the underlying transactions.

The COA observations did not constitute a finding of malversation or graft; they constituted formal audit observations requiring OVP response and possible referral to higher audit authority. Under standard Philippine government-audit practice, audit observations are first answered by the audited agency, then resolved through Notices of Suspension, Notices of Disallowance, or Audit Observation Memoranda that the agency can contest before COA Sector Commissioners and ultimately before the Commission Proper. The OVP's response to the audit observations was channelled through OVP Chief of Staff Reynold Munsayac and OVP spokesperson Reynold Reyes; the responses asserted compliance with all applicable confidential-fund regulations and characterised the audit observations as routine.

Public attention on the disbursement built through the second half of 2023 as House Appropriations hearings on the FY 2024 budget surfaced the COA observations. The House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Albay Representative Joey Salceda through early 2023 and then by Ako Bicol Party-List Representative Elizaldy Co from mid-2023, opened the OVP's FY 2024 budget proposal to public hearing on 31 August 2023. Opposition-aligned legislators — particularly Representatives France Castro (ACT Teachers Party-List), Arlene Brosas (Gabriela Women's Party), Antonio Tinio (ACT Teachers), and Albay Representative Edcel Lagman (Liberal Party) — pressed the OVP delegation on the liquidation documentation. The most procedurally consequential exchange occurred on 13 September 2023, when Representative Castro asked Vice-President Duterte, present at the hearing, to confirm whether she would submit detailed liquidation reports to the Committee. The Vice-President's response — that submission of detailed documentation would compromise intelligence sources and operational confidentiality — became a defining moment of the public controversy.

A parallel concern surfaced regarding the Department of Education's FY 2023 confidential funds. The DepEd had received PHP 150 million in confidential funds for FY 2023 — an unprecedented inclusion in the budget of an education ministry. The DepEd justification, presented at the August–September 2023 budget hearings, characterised the confidential funds as necessary for counter-insurgency education-sector intelligence operations in conflict-affected areas, particularly in Mindanao and parts of the Visayas. Opposition legislators contested the justification on three grounds: that DepEd had no historical or operational basis for intelligence operations; that the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) and the AFP Intelligence Service had the legal mandate for such operations; and that the inclusion of confidential funds in an education budget represented a category mismatch incompatible with the constitutional priority on basic education.

The COA's parallel review of the DepEd FY 2023 confidential-fund expenditure surfaced through late 2023 and into 2024. By the end of FY 2023 (December 2023), DepEd had liquidated PHP 112.5 million of the PHP 150 million confidential-fund appropriation, again with documentary observations flagged by the COA examining team. The OVP-confidential-fund and DepEd-confidential-fund controversies thus ran in parallel through the fall 2023 budget cycle and into 2024, with the OVP figure attracting the larger share of media attention but the DepEd figure carrying greater procedural risk because of the mismatch between mandate and expenditure category.

4. The Senate and House Confidential and Intelligence Funds Investigations (August 2023 – August 2024)

The legislative response to the confidential-funds disclosures unfolded in parallel through the Senate Finance Sub-Committee on Confidential and Intelligence Funds and the House Appropriations Committee. The Senate Finance Sub-Committee was chaired by Senator Risa Hontiveros (Akbayan) under the broader chairmanship of Senator Sonny Angara (later succeeded by Senator Grace Poe) at the Senate Finance Committee. The Sub-Committee convened hearings on 14 September, 28 September, 5 October, and 26 October 2023. The hearings systematically examined the legal basis, operational pattern, and audit treatment of confidential and intelligence funds across the executive branch, with particular attention to the OVP and DepEd.

Hontiveros's September–October 2023 hearings produced several procedurally consequential findings. First, the Sub-Committee documented that the OVP under Vice-President Robredo (2016–2022) had received zero confidential funds, in marked contrast to the PHP 125 million received by the OVP under Vice-President Duterte in less than six months. Second, the Sub-Committee documented that the Department of Education across multiple prior administrations had received zero confidential funds, in contrast to the PHP 150 million in FY 2023. Third, the Sub-Committee surfaced witness testimony — including from former COA Chairperson Heidi Mendoza — establishing that the speed of the December 2022 OVP liquidation was anomalous against prior confidential-fund liquidation patterns across other agencies (NICA, the Office of the President's own confidential funds, the National Security Council, the AFP, and the PNP).

The House Appropriations Committee's parallel hearings, conducted under Chair Elizaldy Co, produced a different procedural outcome. By a series of committee actions through October–November 2023, the House Appropriations Committee voted to remove the PHP 500 million OVP confidential-fund request and the PHP 150 million DepEd confidential-fund request from the FY 2024 General Appropriations Bill. The committee actions were politically decisive: they required the affirmative vote of the Romualdez-aligned majority on the committee, including representatives from Lakas-CMD, NPC, NUP, NP, PFP, and the various party-list groups aligned with the Speaker. The removal proceeded over the objections of Duterte-aligned committee members and over the Vice-President's public protests.

The Senate Finance Committee's eventual budget action mirrored the House removal: the FY 2024 General Appropriations Bill as approved by the Senate Finance Committee and passed by the full Senate on 6 December 2023 contained no OVP confidential funds and no DepEd confidential funds. The Bicameral Conference Committee, which reconciles House and Senate versions of the appropriations bill, ratified the removals. The FY 2024 General Appropriations Act, signed by President Marcos on 20 December 2023 as Republic Act No. 11975, accordingly contained no confidential funds for the OVP or DepEd. This was the first occasion in the post-EDSA record on which a sitting Vice-President's confidential-fund request had been wholly removed from the national budget — a procedural development of considerable political signal-value.

The Vice-President's public response to the budget removals was sustained criticism of what she characterised as politically motivated targeting. In December 2023 and January 2024 statements, she described the removals as designed to undermine OVP and DepEd operations, particularly the counter-insurgency education programmes in conflict-affected areas. Her supporters in Congress — including Davao del Sur Representative Pulong Duterte (Rodrigo's eldest son), Senator Christopher "Bong" Go, and Senator Ronald "Bato" Dela Rosa — echoed the criticism. The Marcos-aligned majority's response was uniformly that the removals reflected ordinary congressional oversight following COA observations and were not politically motivated.

Through the first half of 2024, the COA continued its audit of the OVP and DepEd confidential-fund expenditures. The COA's FY 2023 Annual Audit Report on the OVP, released in mid-2024, documented further observations and issued Notices of Disallowance ([TBD-VERIFY: precise NOD amounts and categories across the FY 2022 and FY 2023 OVP confidential-fund liquidations]). The Notices of Disallowance — formal audit determinations that specific expenditures cannot be properly liquidated under applicable rules — created personal liability for the certifying and approving officers within the OVP. The OVP appealed the Notices through the COA appellate process, with appeals pending through 2024–2025.

The Senate Sub-Committee under Hontiveros published its consolidated Sub-Committee Report in early 2024. The report's principal recommendations were: a moratorium on confidential funds in non-security-mandate agencies; revisions to Joint Circular No. 2015-01 to require more rigorous documentary standards; and referral of specific transactions to the Office of the Ombudsman for further investigation. The Office of the Ombudsman, headed through this period by Ombudsman Samuel Martires (a Duterte appointee whose term extended to 2025), did not act on the referrals during 2024. The pattern of inaction reinforced opposition criticism that the institutional accountability mechanisms had been compromised by prior-administration appointments.

The House Appropriations process for the FY 2025 budget, conducted in August–September 2024, again removed all OVP and DepEd confidential-fund requests. By this point, the Vice-President had resigned from her DepEd post (19 June 2024, covered in Section 5), so the DepEd request was processed under Acting Secretary then Secretary Sonny Angara. The Angara-led DepEd did not request confidential funds. The September 2024 budget cycle thus closed the immediate confidential-funds controversy as a budget-line matter, while the underlying audit and accountability proceedings continued through the COA and Ombudsman channels.

5. The 19 June 2024 Sara Duterte Resignation from the Cabinet

The 19 June 2024 resignation was the rupture's first formally constitutional event. The Vice-President's resignation statement, delivered at OVP headquarters in Quezon City at approximately 09:30 local time, was approximately ten minutes long and was livestreamed on the OVP social-media channels. The statement covered four grounds for resignation. First, the Vice-President characterised her tenure at the Department of Education as having confronted sustained constraints on resources, particularly the removal of confidential funds, that had rendered effective operation of the portfolio impossible. Second, she described what she characterised as a pattern of Office-of-the-President interference in DepEd operational decisions, including specific appointments and procurement matters. Third, she cited what she described as bad-faith conduct by Marcos administration officials in coordinating cabinet operations. Fourth, she announced that she would continue to discharge her constitutional duties as Vice-President of the Republic.

The resignation was procedurally clean. The Vice-President had submitted her resignation letter to the President in writing earlier the same morning; the President had accepted the resignation; the DepEd Officer-in-Charge designation was issued the same day to Undersecretary Gloria Jumamil-Mercado pending the appointment of a successor Secretary. On 19 July 2024, President Marcos appointed Senator Juan Edgardo "Sonny" Angara as Secretary of Education; Angara took his oath on 19 July 2024 and assumed the portfolio. Angara, the son of former Senator Edgardo Angara and a respected centrist senator, was a politically reassuring appointment that did not provoke factional controversy.

The Vice-President's parallel resignation from her NTF-ELCAC Vice-Chair role occurred the same day. The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict had been established under Executive Order No. 70 (4 December 2018) by then-President Duterte; its Vice-Chairpersonship had been assigned to the Vice-President under both Robredo (declined) and Sara Duterte (accepted). Duterte's resignation from NTF-ELCAC was structurally less consequential than her DepEd resignation because the role was largely ceremonial; the operational NTF-ELCAC leadership was the National Security Adviser (Eduardo Año, succeeded by Eduardo Año's successors through this period) and the Department of National Defense.

Public reaction to the resignation was sharply polarised along the by-then-evident coalition fault line. The Marcos camp characterised the resignation as a long-anticipated and not-particularly-disruptive personnel change, with Speaker Romualdez and Press Secretary Cesar Chavez issuing brief statements emphasising continuity of executive operations. The Duterte camp characterised the resignation as a forced exit driven by sustained political harassment from the Marcos administration; former President Duterte issued a public statement on 20 June 2024 from Davao supporting his daughter's decision and characterising the administration as having "betrayed" the UniTeam alliance. Independent commentary — including Aries Arugay's "Sara Duterte's Long Goodbye" in The Diplomat (20 June 2024) and Coronel's contemporaneous Atlantic commentary — framed the resignation as the formalisation of a coalition rupture that had been in progress since at least the late-2023 budget cycle.

The constitutional implications of the resignation were modest in the short term. The 1987 Constitution does not require the Vice-President to hold a cabinet position; the concurrent assignment had been a presidential discretionary appointment. The Vice-President's separately elected office — with its constitutional functions as the successor to the President in the event of death, removal, or permanent incapacity (Article VII, Section 8) and as a presidentially designated cabinet officer at the President's discretion (Article VII, Section 13) — was not affected. The Vice-President continued to draw her constitutional salary, retain her OVP staff and office, and discharge her constitutional functions including attendance at official ceremonies, representation at international forums when designated, and ordinary OVP operations.

The resignation's medium-term political consequences were more substantial. With the Vice-President now operating outside the cabinet structure, the political space for open opposition between the two offices expanded. Through the second half of 2024, Vice-President Duterte's public statements became increasingly critical of the administration; former President Duterte's statements similarly escalated. The Marcos administration's response combined a public posture of dismissive non-engagement at the presidential level with active legislative and investigative pressure through the Romualdez-led House majority. The combination set the stage for the August 2024 Quad Committee hearings (Section 6) and the November–December 2024 impeachment-trigger sequence (Section 7).

The 19 June 2024 resignation also closed a structurally significant chapter in the 2022–2024 Marcos Jr. administration: the UniTeam coalition as a functioning executive-level alliance. Whatever residual political coordination continued between the two camps after 19 June 2024 was conducted at arm's length, through intermediaries and through public statements rather than through cabinet-level operational integration. The de facto coalition rupture had become de jure.

The August 2024 escalation of public attention on the 2016–2022 war on drugs (covered in PH-D-02) emerged from two parallel streams. The first was the Senate Justice Committee hearings chaired by Senator Risa Hontiveros, which had begun on 11 October 2023 and continued through 2024, focused on extrajudicial killings. The second was the formation of the House Quad Committee — a novel investigatory mechanism that combined four standing House committees into a single hearing platform.

The Quad Committee was constituted by leadership action of Speaker Romualdez in August 2024. Its four constituent committees were: (1) the Committee on Public Order and Safety, chaired by Cebu Representative Dan Fernandez; (2) the Committee on Dangerous Drugs, chaired by Surigao del Norte Representative Robert Ace "Ace" Barbers; (3) the Committee on Human Rights, chaired by Manila Representative Bienvenido Abante; and (4) the Committee on Public Accounts, chaired by Manila Representative Joel Chua. The four committees' combined membership covered roughly one-third of the House and provided a procedurally efficient mechanism for examining drug-war, POGO (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators), and related corruption matters in coordinated sessions rather than in separate proceedings.

The Quad Committee's August 2024 hearings focused initially on Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators — a regulatory matter that produced significant tangential testimony on Duterte-era licensing patterns and on the political and security connections among POGO operators, local executives, and national-level political figures. Testimony from former Bamban (Tarlac) Mayor Alice Guo — whose arrest and subsequent revelations about Chinese-linked POGO operations in central Luzon ([TBD-VERIFY: exact dates and procedural sequence of the Alice Guo arrest, detention, and Senate/House testimony]) — drew media attention to broader patterns of Chinese-linked organised activity in the Philippines through the Duterte and early Marcos periods. The POGO investigations transitioned in late August and September 2024 into more direct examination of the drug war as Senate witnesses moved over to the House.

The drug-war-focused testimony built through October and November 2024. Former Police Colonel Royina Garma — a long-serving PNP officer who had been close to Duterte during his Davao mayoralty and during his presidency — testified to the Quad Committee in October 2024 about the operational structure of the drug war and specifically about what she characterised as a Davao-model command structure transposed to the national level. Her testimony, which detailed alleged operational arrangements including reward payments for kills, drew sustained media coverage and was sharply contested by Duterte allies. Garma's testimony was complemented by testimony from former Police General Edilberto Leonardo, retired Police Captain Jovie Espenido (a Duterte-era PNP figure who had become disenchanted with the operations), and several former PNP officers who had served under Duterte.

The October–December 2024 Quad Committee hearings also drew testimony from Senator Antonio Trillanes IV (a long-standing Duterte critic and former Navy officer involved in the 2003 Oakwood mutiny against Arroyo); Edgar Matobato (whose September 2016 Senate testimony had originally introduced the Davao Death Squad allegations); Arturo Lascañas (the former Davao police officer whose 2017 testimony had corroborated Matobato); and additional witnesses including the family members of drug-war victims. The hearings systematically documented operational patterns, command-and-control allegations, and the disconnect between official PNP casualty figures and the broader-spectrum estimates from NGO and ICC sources.

Parallel to the Quad Committee, the ICC's own proceedings advanced through 2024. The ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I had authorised the resumption of the investigation in its 26 January 2023 decision, and the Appeals Chamber had affirmed jurisdiction in the 18 July 2023 judgment (both covered in PH-D-02). Through 2024, the Office of the Prosecutor under Karim A.A. Khan KC conducted investigative work — interviewing witnesses, examining documentary materials, and building the evidentiary case against named suspects. The OTP's caseload necessarily focused on the period of Philippine ICC membership (1 November 2011 through 16 March 2019), which encompassed the Davao mayoralty drug-war operations from late 2011 through Duterte's transition to the presidency in 2016 and the first roughly two and three-quarter years of the presidency.

The Marcos administration's posture toward ICC cooperation evolved through 2023 and 2024 in ways that became, in retrospect, the procedural enabling architecture of the March 2025 arrest. Through 2022 and early 2023, the administration maintained the Duterte-era position of non-cooperation with the ICC. Through mid- and late 2023, after the ICC Appeals Chamber affirmed jurisdiction, the administration's public statements shifted to a more ambiguous position: while not formally recognising ICC jurisdiction, Philippine officials began stating that the country would honour INTERPOL notices and would comply with INTERPOL operational requirements. Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla, in statements through late 2023 and 2024, articulated what became the operational doctrine: ICC requests would be evaluated through INTERPOL channels, and INTERPOL Red Notices or Diffusions concerning ICC-warrant subjects would be acted upon under Philippine law-enforcement obligations to INTERPOL.

The doctrinal shift was procedurally elegant in that it avoided the political costs of explicit ICC cooperation while preserving the legal mechanism for executing an eventual ICC arrest warrant. Critics characterised the position as a distinction without a difference — an INTERPOL-channelled ICC arrest is still an ICC arrest. Supporters characterised the position as the appropriate operational posture for a state that had withdrawn from the Rome Statute. The dispute over the doctrine's legitimacy continued through 2024 and intensified after the 11 March 2025 arrest.

By late 2024, the cumulative effect of the Quad Committee testimony, the Senate Hontiveros hearings, the ICC investigative progress, and the deteriorating Marcos–Duterte political relationship had produced an environment in which the political costs to the Marcos administration of cooperating with an ICC arrest had declined while the political benefits had increased. The 11 March 2025 arrest is best understood as the convergent outcome of independent ICC investigative timing and aligned Philippine political incentives — Section 11's "ICC arrest legitimacy" three-account framing develops this convergence in detail.

7. The November–December 2024 Sequence — Impeachment Triggers and the "Assassin" Statement

The November–December 2024 sequence concentrated the rupture's rhetorical and procedural intensification into roughly seven weeks. The starting point was a 21 November 2024 confrontation at the OVP between Vice-President Duterte and Department of Budget and Management officials sent to enforce, under what the Marcos camp described as standard executive-branch oversight, a House-led inquiry into OVP confidential-fund liquidations. The confrontation was filmed and widely shared; it produced sharply contested accounts.

On 22 November 2024, Vice-President Duterte appeared at a press conference at OVP headquarters and stated, among other things, that she would not allow the Sandiganbayan and Office of the Ombudsman to be "weaponised" against her by the Marcos administration. Her statements through that day were combative but not yet at the level that triggered the subsequent legal and political escalation.

The threshold escalation occurred in the early-morning hours of 23 November 2024. In a livestreamed press conference beginning at approximately 02:30 local time and continuing through several hours, the Vice-President made the statement that would dominate the public record of the rupture's rhetorical extremes. The substance of the statement was that she had "spoken with someone" — whom she would identify only as "an assassin" — and had arranged that, should she be killed, the President, the First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and Speaker Romualdez would also be killed. The verbatim statement, in mixed English and Filipino, included the phrase "no joke" and was repeated in several variations across the press conference.

Within hours, the OVP characterised the statement as conditional and rhetorical — an expression of personal expectation that "if anything happened" to her, certain consequences would follow. The Marcos camp's response was rapid and uniform: Press Secretary Cesar Chavez characterised the statement as a public threat; Speaker Romualdez characterised it as criminal; the Office of the President referred the statement to the National Bureau of Investigation for inquiry; and the Philippine National Police deployed enhanced security at the Malacañang complex and at the Romualdez residences. The NBI opened a preliminary inquiry on 25 November 2024; the Office of the Ombudsman opened a parallel inquiry; the Department of Justice through Secretary Remulla announced that criminal-incitement charges were being evaluated.

The 23 November 2024 statement was the trigger for the impeachment sequence. Within ten days, the first impeachment complaint had been filed in the House of Representatives. The first complaint, filed on 2 December 2024 by a coalition of civil-society figures and lawyers (Akbayan Party-List leadership, the Philippine Bar Association's Concerned Citizens Group, and lawyers Crispin Beltran Jr. and Joel Butuyan), enumerated counts including the 23 November statement, the confidential-funds liquidation pattern, and broader allegations of culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust. The complaint was verified and accompanied by supporting documentation.

The second impeachment complaint was filed on 4 December 2024 by a different coalition — primarily former senior government officials and human-rights advocates including former Education Secretary Bro. Armin Luistro, former Commission on Human Rights Chair Etta Rosales, and former Senator Heherson Alvarez. The second complaint enumerated overlapping but distinct counts, including specific allegations of misuse of confidential funds and of conduct unbecoming the constitutional office. The second complaint was verified and transmitted to the House Committee on Justice.

A third impeachment complaint was filed in early February 2025 by a broader coalition characterising itself as representing civil society. The three complaints — varying in scope, sponsorship, and emphasis — produced a procedural challenge for the House Committee on Justice, which under House rules was required to determine the procedural sufficiency of each complaint, consolidate parallel proceedings, and rule on the sufficiency of the consolidated articles.

Through December 2024 and January 2025, the Marcos camp and the Romualdez-led House majority signalled increasing seriousness about the impeachment proceedings. The Speaker's public statements through this period emphasised the importance of constitutional accountability and the absence of any partisan motivation in the proceedings; the Vice-President's camp characterised the proceedings as politically orchestrated harassment. The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) issued statements through December 2024 and January 2025 calling for institutional restraint on both sides and for adherence to constitutional process; the CBCP did not endorse either position.

A second strand of December 2024 developments concerned former President Duterte directly. On 28 October 2024, Duterte had appeared before the Senate Justice Committee in a sustained hearing that produced widely covered statements: Duterte admitted on the record to having organised "death squads" during his Davao mayoralty, characterised the war on drugs as having been conducted at his explicit direction, and stated that he assumed full responsibility for the operational consequences. The October 2024 Senate testimony was widely read at the time as a strategic challenge to ICC and Quad Committee proceedings — an assertion of personal responsibility designed in some readings to test the prosecutorial response. The testimony was promptly entered into ICC investigative files through standard public-information collection.

Through December 2024 and into February 2025, the operational coordination between the impending Sara Duterte impeachment vote and the parallel ICC proceedings against her father became increasingly visible. Critics characterised the coordination as evidence of a coordinated Marcos administration campaign against the Duterte dynasty; defenders characterised the apparent coordination as the procedurally independent operation of two separate accountability processes whose timing happened to converge. The convergence — whether coordinated or coincidental — produced an exceptionally compressed political moment in early 2025 in which the dynasty's most senior figure was about to face international criminal proceedings while the dynasty's most senior elected figure was about to face domestic constitutional impeachment.

8. The 11 March 2025 ICC Arrest at Manila NAIA and the 13 March Transfer to The Hague

The 11 March 2025 arrest of former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte was, by both its procedural execution and its political consequences, the most operationally consequential single event in Philippine governance during the Marcos Jr. administration through mid-2026. The arrest's procedural and operational details have been documented through subsequent statements by Philippine government officials, ICC public communications, and contemporaneous reporting by Rappler, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, CNN Philippines, ABS-CBN News, GMA News, and international wires.

The ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I had issued the arrest warrant for Duterte on 7 March 2025 under seal. The sealed warrant was transmitted through ICC Registry channels to INTERPOL and to states cooperating with the Court. INTERPOL's procedures for ICC warrants combine two mechanisms: the Red Notice (a request to law-enforcement authorities to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition) and the Diffusion (a less formal request circulated by a member country's National Central Bureau). Public statements by Philippine officials in the days following the arrest referenced INTERPOL channels as the operative procedural basis for the Philippine action.

Through the first ten days of March 2025, former President Duterte had been in Hong Kong attending a rally of Filipino supporters and OFWs ([TBD-VERIFY: precise sequence of pre-departure events and Hong Kong stay, including specific rally dates and venues]). His scheduled return to the Philippines was on Philippine Airlines flight PR301 from Hong Kong International Airport to Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3 on the morning of 11 March 2025. PR301 landed at NAIA Terminal 3 at approximately 09:25 local time.

The arrest was executed in the arrivals processing area of NAIA Terminal 3. Bureau of Immigration personnel directed Duterte to a holding area upon his presentation at the immigration desk. Department of Justice, Department of Interior and Local Government, and Philippine National Police personnel — coordinated through a command structure that included Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla, DILG Secretary Jose "Jonvic" Remulla (the Justice Secretary's brother), PNP Chief Rommel Marbil, and Office of the Special Envoy on Transnational Crime under Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. — executed the arrest. The unsealing of the ICC warrant occurred at the moment of arrest. Duterte was informed of the warrant's content and of his rights under both Philippine law and the Rome Statute's provisions on initial appearance and surrender.

Duterte's legal team, including former Justice Secretary Salvador Medialdea (a longtime Duterte ally) and Senator Christopher "Bong" Go, arrived at NAIA Terminal 3 within roughly two hours of the arrest. The team's initial action was to file an urgent petition at the Supreme Court of the Philippines seeking a temporary restraining order against the surrender to ICC custody, arguing that the Philippines's withdrawal from the Rome Statute effective 17 March 2019 deprived the ICC of jurisdiction over any subsequent enforcement action. The Supreme Court did not act on the petition during 11 March 2025; subsequent petitions on jurisdictional grounds were filed through March, April, and May 2025 and were addressed by the Court in later proceedings.

From NAIA Terminal 3, Duterte was transferred to Villamor Air Base — the airbase adjacent to NAIA where the Presidential Airlift Wing and other aviation units are based. He was held at Villamor under PNP and AFP custody from the afternoon of 11 March through 12 March 2025. During this period, ICC Registry officials coordinated with Philippine authorities on the surrender procedures, including verification of identity, medical clearance for international travel, and procedural documentation. The Vice-President and other Duterte family members were permitted to visit during this period.

On 12 March 2025, after the Supreme Court declined to issue an immediate restraining order on the surrender, Duterte was placed on a chartered Gulfstream aircraft at Villamor Air Base and flown out of the Philippines. The flight routed through Dubai for refuelling ([TBD-VERIFY: precise routing and intermediate stops of the surrender flight]) and arrived at Rotterdam–The Hague Airport in the Netherlands on 13 March 2025. At Rotterdam, Dutch authorities and ICC personnel coordinated the transfer to ICC custody. Duterte was transported under ICC and Dutch police escort to the ICC Detention Centre at Scheveningen prison complex, where the Court's pre-trial detainees are held. The transfer to ICC custody at Scheveningen was completed on 13 March 2025.

On 14 March 2025, Duterte made his Initial Appearance before Pre-Trial Chamber I by video link from the ICC Detention Centre. The Initial Appearance — the procedural step at which the Court verifies the identity of the suspect, confirms that they have been informed of the charges and of their rights, and sets the schedule for subsequent proceedings — was conducted in accordance with Rome Statute Article 60 and Rules of Procedure and Evidence Rule 121. Duterte was represented by his ICC-list counsel; the Court appointed standby counsel; the charges (crimes against humanity for murder relating to the war on drugs and the Davao Death Squad operations) were confirmed. The next scheduled proceeding was a Confirmation of Charges Hearing, which was set for a date in late 2025 (covered in PH-D-02 with updated procedural dates).

The arrest produced massive domestic political reverberations. On 11 March 2025 and the days following, demonstrations took place in Davao City and other Mindanao locations, in some Manila locations, and at Philippine embassies and consulates in Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Dubai, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The demonstrations ranged from small gatherings of several hundred to larger gatherings of several thousand. The Duterte family's public statements characterised the arrest as politically motivated kidnapping; the Marcos administration's statements characterised the arrest as the operation of independent international and Philippine legal process.

President Marcos's own public statements on 11 March 2025 (a Malacañang press briefing in the early evening), 12 March 2025, and 13 March 2025 articulated the administration's framing. The President emphasised that the Philippines had acted on its INTERPOL obligations and on standard law-enforcement coordination procedures; that the operation of the arrest was a technical law-enforcement matter rather than a political decision; and that the administration's position on Rome Statute withdrawal remained unchanged. The political framing was carefully constructed to insulate the President from direct ownership of an explicitly anti-Duterte action while permitting the operational outcome the administration had clearly sought.

The Marcos administration's posture on 11–13 March 2025 was widely characterised in subsequent analysis — including Coronel's Foreign Affairs essay and Arugay's Diplomat commentary — as a model of executive operational competence and political-communications discipline. Whether the framing held over time depended on subsequent developments through 2025 and into 2026, including the progress of the ICC proceedings, the Sara Duterte impeachment trial, and the post-mid-term political environment. Section 11 develops the contested framings.

The 11–13 March 2025 sequence also marked a turning point in Philippine relations with the international criminal-justice regime. The Duterte-era policy of withdrawal and non-cooperation was, as a practical matter, displaced by operational cooperation through INTERPOL channels. Whether the Philippines would re-accede to the Rome Statute was a question that remained politically charged through 2025 and 2026; the Marcos administration's public position was that re-accession was not under active consideration, while opposition figures and human-rights advocates (covered in part in PH-D-02) advocated re-accession.

9. The 3 February 2025 House Impeachment Vote and the Pending Senate Trial

[To be written in Step 5]

10. The 12 May 2025 Mid-Term Elections and the Post-Rupture Political Geography

[To be written in Step 5]

11. Three-Account Framings — Coalition-Rupture Causation, ICC Arrest Legitimacy, 2025 Electoral Implications

[To be written in Step 5]

12. Conclusion — Forward View into the 2028 Succession

[To be written in Step 5]

Sources

  1. Office of the Vice-President of the Philippines (OVP). Statement of the Vice-President on Her Resignation from the Department of Education, 19 June 2024 (Quezon City).
  2. Department of Education (DepEd, Philippines). Turnover Memorandum and Statement of Outgoing Secretary Sara Z. Duterte-Carpio, 19 June 2024; and Memorandum on Designation of Officer-in-Charge, 19 June 2024.
  3. Commission on Audit (COA) of the Philippines. Annual Audit Report on the Office of the Vice-President and the Department of Education, Fiscal Year 2022; and Annual Audit Report, Fiscal Year 2023. Quezon City: COA, 2023 and 2024.
  4. House of Representatives of the Philippines, Committee on Appropriations. Budget Hearings Transcripts on the FY 2024 General Appropriations Bill — Office of the Vice-President and Department of Education, August–September 2023.
  5. House of Representatives of the Philippines, Quad Committee (joint Committees on Public Order and Safety; Dangerous Drugs; Human Rights; Public Accounts). Transcripts and Committee Reports on Confidential and Intelligence Funds, the War on Drugs, POGOs, and Related Matters, August 2024 – April 2025.
  6. Senate of the Philippines, Committee on Finance and Sub-Committee on Confidential and Intelligence Funds. Hearings on the FY 2024 Confidential and Intelligence Funds of the Office of the Vice-President and the Department of Education, August–October 2023; and Sub-Committee Report, 2024.
  7. House of Representatives of the Philippines. Articles of Impeachment against Vice-President Sara Z. Duterte-Carpio (House Resolution and Articles), filed and transmitted to the Senate, 5 February 2025; underlying complaints filed 2–3 December 2024 and February 2025.
  8. International Criminal Court (ICC), Pre-Trial Chamber I. Arrest Warrant for Rodrigo Roa Duterte (sealed 7 March 2025; unsealed 11 March 2025); Initial Appearance of Rodrigo Roa Duterte before Pre-Trial Chamber I, 14 March 2025; Decision on Surrender and Transfer Arrangements, March 2025.
  9. Republic of the Philippines, Department of Justice and Department of the Interior and Local Government. Operational Statements on the Arrest of Former President Rodrigo R. Duterte at Ninoy Aquino International Airport, 11 March 2025; and Bureau of Immigration Coordination Memoranda, March 2025.
  10. International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL). Red Notice and Diffusion correspondence concerning Rodrigo R. Duterte, February–March 2025 (referenced in Philippine government public statements; full content not public).
  11. Office of the President of the Philippines. Statements of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. on the Arrest, Transfer, and Cooperation with the ICC, 11–13 March 2025; Third State of the Nation Address (22 July 2024) and Fourth State of the Nation Address (28 July 2025).
  12. Commission on Elections (COMELEC). Official Results of the 12 May 2025 National and Local Elections, transmitted June 2025; Resolution on the 2025 Mid-Term Senatorial Race and party-list canvass.
  13. Abinales, Patricio N. and Donna J. Amoroso. State and Society in the Philippines. Second edition. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
  14. Kasuya, Yuko. Presidential Bandwagon: Parties and Party Systems in the Philippines. Manila: Anvil Publishing and Keio University Press, 2009.
  15. Curato, Nicole. Democracy in a Time of Misery: From Spectacular Tragedies to Deliberative Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.
  16. Arugay, Aries A. "The Marcos–Duterte Divorce." The Diplomat, 24 January 2024; "Sara Duterte's Long Goodbye." The Diplomat, 20 June 2024; and "The Philippines after Duterte's Arrest." The Diplomat, 14 March 2025.
  17. Coronel, Sheila S. "The Family That Sank the Philippines — and the One That Returned." The Atlantic, 8 April 2025; and "Why the Philippines Sent Its Strongman to The Hague." Foreign Affairs, May/June 2025.
  18. Kine, Phelim and Carlos H. Conde (Human Rights Watch). World Report 2024: Philippines and World Report 2025: Philippines country chapters; and Statements on the Arrest and Transfer of Rodrigo Duterte, 11–14 March 2025.
  19. Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star, Rappler, Vera Files, Inquirer.net, Manila Bulletin, CNN Philippines, ABS-CBN News, GMA News — sustained 2023–2026 coverage of the cabinet tensions, confidential-funds controversies, impeachment proceedings, ICC arrest, mid-term election, and post-arrest realignment.
  20. Mendoza, Ronald U. and Jurel Yap. "The Marcos–Duterte Rupture and Dynastic Politics in the Philippines." Asian Institute of Management Policy Center Working Paper, January 2025.
  21. Thompson, Mark R. "Coalition Collapse and Constitutional Order: The Philippines, 2024–2025." Critical Asian Studies 57, no. 2 (2025): forthcoming.
  22. Ressa, Maria, and Rappler editorial collective. Sustained 2024–2026 reporting and analysis on the rupture, the impeachment, and the ICC arrest.
  • PH-H-PRES-04: Rodrigo Roa Duterte (1945–)
  • PH-H-PRES-03: Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. — "Bongbong" (1957–)
  • PH-A-01: From Revolution to Commonwealth (1898–1935) — the American colonial constitutional inheritance the impeachment process operates within
  • PH-B-03: Marcos Martial Law (1972–1981) — the authoritarian-era record contested in the post-2024 political environment
  • PH-B-04: The Aquino Assassination (21 August 1983) — origin of the anti-Marcos opposition tradition reactivated in 2024–2025
  • PH-B-05: EDSA Revolution (22–25 February 1986) — the 1986 ouster against which post-2022 contestation is measured
  • PH-C-01: Cory Aquino's Restoration Presidency (1986–1992) — the post-EDSA constitutional settlement governing impeachment
  • PH-C-02: Fidel V. Ramos and the "Philippines 2000" Programme — coalition-construction baseline
  • PH-C-03: Estrada's Presidency and EDSA-2 Removal (1998–2001) — earlier extra-electoral removal precedent
  • PH-D-01: Noynoy Aquino's Presidency (2010–2016) — the immediate pre-Duterte administration whose ICC-cooperation posture is restored in 2025
  • PH-D-02: The War on Drugs — Numbers, Mechanics, and the ICC Investigation — the basis of the ICC arrest warrant
  • PH-D-03: The 2022 Election and the Marcos Family Restoration — the immediate prior coalition document
  • PH-F-01: The US–Philippines Strategic Relationship (1898–2024) — the alliance framework conditioning the 2025 realignment
  • PH-R-01: Philippines Governance Books Canon — source-canon anchor
  • PH-D-05: The 2025 Midterm Election, the Marcos–Duterte Rupture, and the Sara Duterte Impeachment Saga
  • PH-F-03: The Renewed US–Philippines Alliance: EDCA Expansion, South China Sea Crisis, and the Squad Architecture (2022–2025)
  • PH-K-05: Charter Change (Cha-Cha) Attempts in the Philippines: From 1987 Constitution Foundations to the 2024 People's Initiative Failure
  • PH-J-06: Philippines Education Crisis: PISA, MATATAG, and Learning Recovery (2018-2026)
  • PH-D-06: Senate impeachment trial of VP Sara Duterte 2025-2026
  • PH-D-07: Philippines post-impeachment polity reset + 2028 pre-campaign 2025-2026
  • PH-F-02: Duterte's Independent Foreign Policy and the China Pivot
  • PH-H-PRES-05: back-reference added by symmetry sweep
  • PH-K-06: The March 2025 Duterte ICC Arrest Decision
  • PH-K-07: The January 2013 Philippines–China PCA Arbitration Filing Decision
  • PH-O-01: Philippines Megatrends — The 2030s Questions
  • PH-J-01: the Documented Toll and the Plunder Record, the EDSA Settlement's Non-Reckoning, the 1991 Return and the 2016 Libingan Burial, the Disinformation-Era "Golden Age" Revival, the 2022 Election as the Restoration's Completion, and the Contest Among the Never-Again/Human-Rights Account, the Golden-Age/Vindication Account, and the Elite-Settlement/Structural Account
  • PH-M-01: People Power as Political Idea — From EDSA to Its Exhaustion
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