Sara’s videos replayed as impeach raps tackled
Two videos involving Vice President Sara Duterte were replayed at Tuesday’s hearing by the House committee on justice, as it tackled the two remaining impeachment complaints against her.
From an initial four complaints, the committee is now determining the substance of two complaints—one filed on Feb. 9 by civil society groups and a Feb. 18 complaint by lawyer Nathaniel Cabrera accusing the Vice President of unexplained wealth and omissions in her statements of assets, liabilities and net worth.
The Feb. 9 complaint accuses Duterte of misuse of about P612.5 million in confidential funds; bribery and corruption during her tenure as education secretary from 2022 to 2024; and making death threats in her Nov. 23, 2024, video against President Marcos, first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and former Speaker Martin Romualdez.
On Monday the House justice panel voted 22-10 to set aside a complaint filed on Feb. 2 by the chamber’s Makabayan bloc, for allegedly violating the one-year bar on the filing of impeachment complaints against Duterte, while civil society alliance Tindig Pilipinas withdrew that day its complaint also filed on Feb. 2, saying it would now support the Feb. 9 complaint.
‘Premonition’
In her opening speech at Tuesday’s hearing, Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro, committee chair, appeared to poke fun at a “premonition” by a colleague she did not name.
Sagip party list Rep. Paolo Henry Marcoleta had earlier asked the committee to remind Tindig Pilipinas coconvener Kiko Aquino Dee, who was in Monday’s hearing, to exercise decorum. When Luistro asked Marcoleta why he wanted Dee reminded, Marcoleta said it was out of a premonition.
Dee and other activists, however, had protested from the Senate gallery in August last year, giving a conspicuous thumbs down sign when that chamber voted to archive an earlier impeachment complaint against Duterte.
“But today, we leave the world of premonitions behind. We are not fortune tellers. Our duty is to scrutinize the documents now before us,” Luistro said.
Touching on Duterte’s assassination threats, Mamamayang Liberal Rep. Leila de Lima, who endorsed the Feb. 9 complaint, noted that the threats were “very clear because we all saw it [in her] viral video,” which was played at Tuesday’s hearing.
De Lima and Bicol Saro party list Rep. Terry Ridon also tackled the bribery charge against the Vice President, with Ridon asking the committee to play another video showing then Education Undersecretary Gloria Jumamil Mercado and other former officials of the Department of Education (DepEd) claiming they were bribed by Duterte.
VP’s alleged ‘envelopes’
But Quezon City Rep. Jesus Manuel Angel “Bong” Suntay questioned that claim as the supposed basis of the Feb. 9 complaint. “Nowhere in the complaint did it show any contracts to be influenced, any contractors to be given in exchange for the alleged envelope. So once again, we cannot just conclude that it is to influence procurement or liquidation without any facts,” he said.
De Lima replied: “The recital of facts are pleaded in the complaint itself, referring to those testimonies, the admissions of these officers that they received envelopes, and most of these were given personally by Education Assistant Secretary Sunshine Fajarda, who said the envelope directly came from VP Sara. That is an act attributable to her.”
Ridon said the House has a video of a September 2024 hearing by the committee on good government and public accountability which “maybe we can play, so we can be refreshed as to the testimonies that [were] elicited from […] Mercado et al.”
It was Luistro who asked Mercado about the envelopes when she and other former DepEd officials appeared before that hearing.
Mercado testified then that she was appointed head of the procuring entity (HoPE) under DepEd in February 2023. “Between February of 2023 [and]September 2023, I received a total of nine envelopes [which] were handed to me mostly by Assistant Secretary Sunshine M. Fajarda [and] which she sa[id] came directly from Vice President Duterte,” Mercado said.
Safe houses
Regarding Duterte’s confidential funds, Ridon also pointed out that much of it was used for safe house rentals—a controversial expenditure itself because of the bloated rental fees, he said.
“Even if we talk about an actual use of confidential funds, which is basically the rental of safe houses to supposedly accommodate givers of confidential information, I think in the previous… committee on good government led by Congressman [Joel] Chua, it had been stated by COA (Commission on Audit) that OVP (Office of the Vice President) spent a huge chunk of money for the rental of safe houses,” Ridon said.
He added: “P16 million ha[d] been used for the rental of safe houses and I think an assumption was made that in the course of 11 days, around P500,000 was used for this. So if you make an extrapolation on a day-to-day, it would be around P45,000 per day, and if you further make an extrapolation to 30 days, that should be P1.36 million per month in [the] rental of these particular safe house properties.”
Ridon also referred to another hearing in 2024 by the good government committee where a representative of the COA said there was a “high likelihood” the OVP spent the P16 million for the rental of 34 safe houses in just 11 days.
Former Antipolo Rep. Romeo Acop asked the COA audit team leader Gloria Camora, who testified on Tuesday, if the 34 acknowledgment receipts accounting for Duterte’s confidential funds corresponded to one safe house each.
Camora, after initially saying she could not confirm this, said there is information indicating that, indeed, the 34 acknowledgment receipts represented one safe house each.
If these properties are not found in high-end villages, Ridon said, there is reason to assume the confidential funds were not properly used.
“These safe houses should be in Forbes Park, these safe houses should be in Dasmariñas Village, these safe houses should be in the most expensive condominiums in Bonifacio Global City. If it’s not there, my friends, it would seem that the use of confidential funds, even if it suits the guidelines, would still be improper,” he said.
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