CHICKENPIE.They practiced. That's the sentence.
The prosecution team for Sara Duterte's impeachment trial is running mock sessions — rehearsing their arguments, blocking their moves, probably drilling who gets to stand where when the cameras find them. The trial starts July 6. They have time. They're using it.
Here's what nobody's practicing for: explaining how we got here twice.
Sara Duterte is the first official in Philippine history to be impeached by the House of Representatives two times. Not two officials. One official. Two impeachments. The record books had to create a new row.
The first time was messy. The second time had 257 yes votes.
At some point a political movement stops being a controversy and starts being a pattern. This is that point.
What the mock trials can't simulate: the audience. You can rehearse the arguments. You cannot rehearse eight million people who remember the Marcos-Duterte billboard, the matching barong, and the year Sara said she'd have Marcos, Liza, and Martin Romualdez killed if she died by unnatural causes. That wasn't hypothetical then. It still isn't now. The barbed wire at the Senate entrance went up two weeks ago for a completely separate circus — Ronald dela Rosa holed up evading an ICC arrest warrant — and even that felt like a preview.
Bongbong and Sara were the love story. Then came the divorce. Now comes the courtroom.
The thing about watching Philippine politics long enough is you stop asking "how did we get here" and start asking "what does here look like now." Here looks like prosecutors running rehearsal runs. Here looks like a sitting VP with a June 1 deadline to respond to summons. Here looks like a history book being written in real time, somewhat shoddily, with a lot of competing footnotes.
They're preparing. She's prepared for this her whole life.
One of them will win. The other will have been the first Filipino official impeached twice.
In the meantime: same Senate building, same marble floors, same country watching, different stakes. The mock trial ends, the real one begins, and somewhere in a filing cabinet, a record says "second time."
Twice. We did it twice.
