SC has no power to impeach Marcos

Only Congress has the authority to remove the country’s top officials, contrary to a viral TikTok claim that the Supreme Court has voted to oust President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. 

The video posted on April 7 by @redscorpion.738 features a clip of Net25 public affairs show “Sa Ganang Mamamayan” in which the hosts discussed a supposed Supreme Court decision to remove the president:

Nagdesisyon po ang korte suprema na tanggalin na ‘yung president na ‘yan […] Eh sabi nila ang dami mong paglabag eh, tanggalin ka na namin (The Supreme Court has already decided to remove the president. They said that due to the president’s numerous violations, it is time for them to be removed from power). 

A text graphic superimposed over the clip echoes the false claim:

Korte Suprema, nagsalita na tatanggalin na daw ang presidente (The Supreme Court has spoken: Remove the president).

However, Marcos has not been impeached nor has any petition been filed against him before Congress. 

The misleading video used a spliced a clip from the show’s full April 4 episode, which only showed the hosts’ lead-in to a segment covering the South Korean Constitutional Court’s unanimous decision to uphold President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment announced earlier that day.

While South Korea’s Constitutional Court rules on the validity of a parliamentary motion to remove a public official, the Philippine Constitution vests in the Senate the sole authority to do so after a trial, as provided under Section 3, Article XI of the 1987 Constitution.

The trial can only commence once the official has been impeached by the House of Representatives, which selects members to form the prosecution panel. 

Sara Duterte became the first vice president in the Philippines to be impeached, but remains in office while awaiting trial by the Senate in July. 

A similar claim previously debunked by Vera Files used a distorted clip of a news report to falsely claim the Supreme Court has junked Duterte’s impeachment case. 

@redscorpion.738’s post has garnered 330,000 views, 20,600 likes and 1,392 shares as of this writing. (CC, Tinig ng Plaridel)