On the twenty-third day of Vice President Sara Duterte's impeachment trial, a constitutional question older than the trial itself moved to the center of the proceedings. When prosecutors announced they would forgo fifteen witnesses and instead call Duterte directly to the stand, her defense invoked the right against self-incrimination — a protection the Philippine Constitution extends not to the powerful alone, but to every citizen. The moment crystallized a tension that has run beneath the trial since its opening: whether the accused must answer in her own voice, or whether the law permits he