MANILA, Philippines — Senate Secretary Renato Bantug Jr. expressed hope that the pre-trial conference will be finished today so that the pre-trial order will be issued on Thursday.
The pre-trial conference for the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte continued on Monday, June 22, to finish the marking of evidence presented by the defense and prosecution panels.
The pre-trial conference serves as the initial gathering of both panels before the senator-judges begin the trial. The Senate, sitting as Impeachment Court, is expected to start the trial on July 6.
"Hopefully, we get to finish it within the day so that we can start working with the pre-trial order," Bantug said in a chance interview.
"It's a tight schedule considering we only have two weeks away from the trial," he added.
Asked about the reported altercation during the pre-trial conference in June 18, Bantug said, "Everytime that lawyers were gathered in a room you can expect that."
"It will be unusual if there will be no exchanges between lawyers. There's nothing unusual. It's something that we can expect," he added.
The defense and prosecution panels on Thursday finished marking of evidence concerning Articles 3 (Bribery) and 4 (Threats).
But both panels needed more time to process documents related to Articles 1 (Misuse of Funds) and 2 (Unexplained Wealth) because these are voluminous. They continued the procedure today.