Whether in person or through her lawyers, Vice President Sara Duterte isn’t participating in the ongoing impeachment hearings at the House of Representatives.
Those expecting the “bloodbath” that she threatened will have to wait for the case to go to the Senate for trial. Her father’s former chief legal counsel, Salvador Panelo, sees the case being junked by 18 to 20 of the senators.
In the VP’s absence, the House proceedings are providing only one side of the story. The accusations are detailed and not easily brushed aside with a mere blanket denial. And due to the gravity of the accusations, they are best confronted ASAP.
The VP’s camp has reason to grouse that the thieves in the budget and flood control mess have stolen public funds that are a billion times larger than what she is accused of misusing and pocketing. Yet that probe is now in limbo.
But this argument doesn’t wash. People want accountability, in both the flood control mess and her handling of public funds, as vice president and education secretary. Taxpayers want accountability from ALL public officials, especially those in high office. If investigation priorities are laced with politics, so be it.
Duterte diehard supporters say the impeachment aims to remove the VP from the 2028 presidential race. This goes without saying, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for accountability from public officials. If people’s money had truly been used judiciously, the VP should breeze through the impeachment process.
The Vice President remains the frontrunner in the 2028 race, although her numbers are slipping, as a new survey will show. In the recent Pulse Asia survey on performance, her ratings were statistically flat, receiving no bump from her announcement during the survey period that she would run for president in 2028.
All surveys have shown that corruption has become one of the top concerns of Filipinos – ranking alongside inflation and jobs.
Accusations of corruption had pulled down the VP’s ratings during the House hearings in 2024. Although this was eclipsed by the scale of the budget mess and public works scandal, it doesn’t give anyone a free pass in other corruption cases. Especially if the alleged offender is the second highest official of the land.
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Unwilling to participate in the House proceedings, the VP and her team have responded to the accusations anyway, through public statements and interviews.
Her lawyers have explained that they prefer to wait for the Supreme Court to rule on their petition to effectively put an end to the impeachment process. But in the absence of a restraining order from the SC, the House is proceeding, and the VP is losing her chance to rebut the accusations on the spot.
It would have been interesting to hear her legal team challenging the testimony of alleged bagman Ramil Madriaga.
Reactions to the testimony seem to be divided along partisan lines.
The Duterte camp has dismissed him as a spinner of fantastic tales, calling him a drama king for that tearful episode in his House testimony.
Even those who concede that he might have been part of the DDS say he is inflating his role in the Duterte camp. They point out that considering the sensitive matters that he claims to have been privy to, he would be in the same league as Rodrigo Duterte’s anak-anakan, Sen. Bong Go, and former executive secretary Salvador Medialdea in the hierarchy of DDS VIPs. So how come no one has heard of Ramil Madriaga, accused kidnapper, until he recently had a run-in with former Duterte spokesman Harry Roque over land-grabbing issues?
On the other hand, believers of Madriaga’s testimony point out that Duterte is known to have employed unremarkable people to perform remarkably evil deeds, such as extrajudicial killings. The believers note that Madriaga, who says he finished law but failed to pass the Bar, fits the profile of someone who might be tapped to run dirty errands.
Perhaps his waiver of secrecy laws on his bank accounts could dispel or ease doubts about his testimony. Immense amounts in his bank accounts that clearly can’t be explained by his legitimate sources of livelihood can prove his claims of massive payoffs for dirty work as well as being used by the Dutertes as a financial dummy.
Madriaga’s story needs corroborating testimonies or material evidence. His affidavits are quite detailed, offering many points in which the defense can try to puncture holes.
But even Malacañang found it necessary to deny one aspect of Madriaga’s testimony, about a supposed term-sharing agreement between Bongbong Marcos and Sara Duterte. Presumably in exchange for Inday Sara sliding down to the vice presidential race in 2022, BBM would supposedly hand over the presidency midway through his term, in 2025, to his UniTeam partner.
This story does seem outlandish – something we never heard even as the UniTeam began breaking apart. The only UniTeam deals supposedly broken were that Inday Sara would get the defense portfolio and her ally Gloria Macapagal Arroyo would become House speaker.
Videos and photos are surfacing to disprove VP Sara’s denial of knowing Madriaga. On One News’ “Storycon” yesterday, Panelo’s reaction to the images boiled down to, so what? The justice committee of the House of Representatives has yet to decide whether to use Madriaga’s testimony.
The justice committee is said to be taking great pains to avoid having the hearings seen as a “mini-trial,” which could warrant Supreme Court intervention again. Panelo told Storycon that the Commission on Audit findings on the VP’s use of over P70 million in confidential funds would likely be challenged before the SC.
Justice panel chair Gerville Luistro has likened the House proceedings to a preliminary investigation in an ordinary criminal case, to determine if there is probable cause for going to trial.
We don’t know if the justice panel will adhere to the new standard that Jesus Crispin Remulla set when he was the secretary of justice – that the evidence should not just provide probable cause, but reasonable certainty of conviction.
The VP’s camp sees no such evidence in the complaints, accusing the House of conducting a fishing expedition in the ongoing proceedings.
She can present a better case for innocence if her camp participates in the House proceedings, but Panelo said this won’t happen.
The bloodbath will have to wait for the Senate trial.