In my last column, I raised a simple proposition: due diligence is a process, not a verdict. Tony La Viña had explained at length why, after weeks of studying documents, consulting colleagues and examining the law, he agreed to join Senator Loren Legarda’s legal team and serve as her spokesperson. I had no reason to doubt that he had done his homework. My concern was what we were being asked to infer from it. Doing due diligence explains how someone arrives at a conclusion; it does not confer upon that conclusion the status of truth.

Since then, La Viña has taken his argument further. He is no longer merely defending Legarda on the facts and the law. He has characterized the investigation involving Legarda and her son, Batangas Rep. Leandro Leviste, as “lawfare” and “political persecution.”

That is a considerably larger claim, and it deserves closer examination.

Lawfare is real. Governments can use laws, prosecutors, regulatory agencies, investigations and even courts not simply to enforce the law but to weaken political opponents. Philippine history provides enough examples of cases filed selectively, investigations timed strategically, prosecutorial discretion exercised unevenly, and legal processes becoming punishment long before guilt is established.

La Viña is therefore right to remind us of the danger. But acknowledging that lawfare exists is different from establishing that a particular investigation constitutes lawfare. That distinction becomes especially important because the label itself changes the subject of the controversy. Instead of asking whether the accused committed the acts alleged, attention shifts toward why the government is investigating them in the first place.

Both are legitimate questions. They are simply not the same question.

An investigation can conceivably be politically motivated and still uncover actual wrongdoing. Conversely, an investigation can prove legally weak or factually mistaken without necessarily having been mounted as political persecution. Politics makes us uncomfortable with these possibilities because we prefer cleaner categories: prosecution or persecution, accountability or harassment, innocence or guilt. Reality is often less cooperative.

La Viña has offered several arguments that deserve serious consideration. He points to the timing of the investigation and argues that scrutiny intensified after Leviste began speaking publicly against corruption. He disputes important factual and legal premises behind the allegations. He also emphasizes the need to distinguish Legarda from the business activities of her son, arguing that motherhood cannot itself become evidence of criminal responsibility.

On that last point, the principle should hardly be controversial. Family relationship alone cannot establish culpability. But neither does that necessarily dispose of the questions being raised. If an allegation concerns the possible exercise of political influence rather than formal ownership of a company, then proving that Legarda was neither shareholder nor corporate officer answers one question while leaving another unresolved. Ownership, participation and influence are analytically different things, and the evidence must establish which, if any, is relevant.

This is where I find the controversy increasingly interesting. La Viña says he spent weeks examining documents, photographs, media reports and applicable laws before reaching his conclusion. The Office of the Ombudsman, for its part, has publicly maintained that it studied the case thoroughly before proceeding.

We therefore have two opposing sides effectively telling the public the same thing: we did our homework.

But who owns due diligence? Neither side does. The fact that an advocate has studied a case carefully does not establish the innocence of his client, just as the fact that government investigators have studied a case carefully does not establish guilt. Expertise deserves consideration; institutional authority deserves respect; reputation can justify giving someone a serious hearing. None of these substitutes for evidence.

The invocation of lawfare raises the stakes further because accusations of lawfare can themselves become instruments of political combat. If every politician facing investigation can delegitimize the process simply by describing it as persecution, accountability becomes exceedingly difficult. Subpoenas become harassment, prosecutors become political operatives and investigations become evidence of conspiracy.

The opposite danger is just as serious. If government can answer every allegation of political persecution merely by invoking the authority or supposed independence of its institutions, genuinely weaponized prosecutions become difficult to challenge. Institutions cannot demand public trust simply because they are institutions, particularly in a political system where institutional independence has repeatedly been contested.

This suggests that both sides should face a higher evidentiary burden than their preferred narratives sometimes acknowledge.

If this is legitimate accountability, government must establish the evidentiary chain. What specific acts are being alleged? What laws are implicated? What connects the exercise of public authority to the alleged private benefit? Where does evidence end and inference begin? These questions matter because association is not participation, and suspicion is not proof.

If this is lawfare, the same discipline should apply. What evidence demonstrates selective prosecution, procedural irregularity, inconsistent application of law, political interference or differential treatment of similarly situated actors? Timing and political context can certainly form part of such an argument, but they cannot carry the entire burden themselves. Political consequences do not automatically establish political intent.

There is a larger issue here that extends well beyond Legarda, Leviste or La Viña. We are becoming accustomed to interpreting almost every exercise of institutional authority through the language of political allegiance. A court decision unfavorable to one camp becomes judicial activism. An investigation unfavorable to another becomes persecution. A congressional inquiry becomes political theater. Regulatory action becomes harassment.

The eventual casualty is not simply whichever politician happens to be under investigation. It is the possibility that citizens can still regard institutions as something other than extensions of competing political camps.

Once the first question becomes not “Is this institution right?” but “Whose side is this institution on?”, even legitimate accountability becomes difficult to believe. The public begins judging evidence according to its source rather than judging the source according to its evidence.

La Viña may ultimately be correct that what is happening to Legarda and Leviste bears the characteristics of political persecution. If evidence eventually establishes that government institutions were selectively or improperly mobilized against them for political purposes, then lawfare would be an appropriate description. But that conclusion has to emerge from the evidence rather than precede it.

The same restraint must apply in the other direction. The existence of an investigation is not proof of guilt. The institutional authority of the Ombudsman cannot substitute for establishing its case any more than La Viña’s accumulated credibility can establish his.

In my previous column, I argued that due diligence is not a verdict. The developments since then suggest two necessary additions: an investigation is not a verdict either, and neither is an accusation of lawfare.

Both sides tell us they have done their homework. Perhaps the public should now be allowed to see enough of it to judge the arguments for itself.

Show us the work.