Every impeachment is built on one assumption:

That evidence can still change minds.

Strip away the politics, the personalities, and the television cameras, and that is what every impeachment is ultimately designed to do. Present evidence. Test it. Challenge it. Weigh it. Arrive at a judgment.

But after following the first week of the impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte, I found myself wondering whether that assumption still holds.

Because outside the Senate, many Filipinos seem to have already delivered their verdict.

Which raises a more uncomfortable question.

If we no longer expect evidence to change minds, what exactly is the trial trying to accomplish?

The headlines naturally focus on witnesses, objections, digital evidence, and legal arguments—and they should. Those issues will ultimately determine whether the prosecution secures the Constitution's required two-thirds vote: 16 of the Senate's 24 members.

The Senate undoubtedly carries an enormous responsibility.

Its task is not simply to decide whether the Vice President should remain in office. It must also earn public confidence that whatever decision it reaches is grounded in fairness, independence, and due process.

That is why every ruling, every objection, and every action of the impeachment court is now scrutinized far beyond the Senate session hall.

Outside the Senate, however, evidence is rarely consumed in full. It is clipped, captioned, shared, and often judged long before it is understood.

Yet perhaps the hardest trial belongs to us.

There's a name for this in political psychology: motivated reasoning—our tendency to accept evidence that confirms what we already believe and resist evidence that challenges it.

You don't need to read academic journals to recognize it.

Just read the reactions after every hearing.

For many, the prosecution has already failed before completing its case.

For others, the defense has already lost before fully answering the allegations.

We like to believe we judge evidence objectively. Too often, we end up defending the side we had already chosen.

An entire day's hearing is reduced to a few viral clips.

A carefully argued position competes with a catchy caption.

We cheer the sharpest exchange instead of examining the strongest evidence.

The deeper question is no longer whether the evidence is persuasive.

It is whether we are still willing to be persuaded.

Perhaps that is the most important headline of all.

Democracy has always demanded something more difficult than agreement.

It demands patience before judgment.

Humility before certainty.

And a willingness to let evidence—not emotion—complete its work.

Yet too often, we trade due process for instant gratification, demanding immediate conclusions based on alignment rather than proof.

If we lose that, something more serious than one impeachment is at stake.

The trial stops being a search for truth.

It becomes a search for validation.

The verdict no longer changes minds. It merely protects the certainty we carried into the courtroom.

Perhaps we've been looking at this impeachment the wrong way.

Every impeachment presents evidence against a public official.

This one is quietly collecting evidence about the rest of us.

It is revealing whether we still have the civic discipline to let institutions do their work before demanding a verdict.

Whether we can still distinguish evidence from emotion, due process from political preference, and judgment from certainty.

If every future investigation, election, impeachment, or court decision is accepted only when it produces the outcome we already expected, then the greatest casualty will not be a politician.

It will be the democratic promise that our deepest disagreements can still be resolved through institutions instead of outrage.

Years from now, history will record whether Vice President Sara Duterte was convicted or acquitted.

But history may be more interested in something else.

What did this impeachment reveal about the kind of democracy we had become?

Were we still capable of letting institutions do their work before reaching our own verdict?

Were we still willing to be persuaded?

Or had we reached the point where no institution—not the Senate, not the courts, not even the evidence itself—could tell us anything we had not already decided to believe?

Not because the truth was hidden, but because we had lost the collective focus required to see it through.

The impeachment may bear Sara Duterte's name, but the trial extends far beyond her.

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