Luistro rejects Pulong jab: House panel not pressured
The head of the House justice committee on Thursday rejected allegations by a brother of Vice President Sara Duterte that lawmakers had been pressured to find probable cause in the impeachment complaints against her.
Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro said the congressional panel was not biased when it ruled on Wednesday to support the two complaints, stressing that the lawmakers acted strictly within their constitutional mandate in handling high-stakes charges that could derail Duterte’s presidential ambitions.
“I have not encountered anyone calling me or my chief of staff concerning support to this impeachment process,” Luistro, who heads the House committee on justice, told GMA 7’s morning program “Unang Hirit.”
“I wish to add that in my capacity as chair, we cannot stand for either party,” she added. “We stood for the process.”
Davao Rep. Paolo “Pulong” Duterte alleged that congressmen were pressured to support the complaints against Duterte or risk losing budget allocations for their districts.
Akbayan Rep. Percival Cendaña said that such remarks from the Davao lawmaker were expected, especially after justice committee members pushed the two complaints closer to an impeachment trial.
Cendaña said that they expected “black propaganda when it comes to the impeachment.”
“But in the end, this is not the time for the members of the House to be afraid,” he told reporters.
Luistro said the justice panel was “impartial” when it ruled on the complaints following the clarificatory hearings on the two impeachment complaints.
“We’re independent because we acted as investigators in a proceeding akin to a preliminary investigation,” said Luistro, a lawyer and former state counsel and law professor.
The committee chair also said the panel would stand by its finding that the complaints against Duterte were supported by ample evidence, pledging to defend the decision before the plenary next week when Congress resumes session.
Luistro added that lawmakers would fulfill their mandate to “prosecute” Duterte if at least 106 representatives, or one-third of the House, support the impeachment and send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial.
“From this day forward, our mandate should be able to defend the determination of probable cause by the justice committee,” she said. “If this will be affirmed by the plenary, our mandate will continue. That is, to prosecute the Vice President until her conviction in the trial by the Senate.”
The 53-member justice committee voted unanimously in finding probable cause in the two complaints alleging corruption and constitutional violations by the Vice President.
Ignoring the committee’s invitation to appear, Duterte has denied the allegations in media statements and social media posts, calling them “politically motivated” attacks following the collapse of her alliance with President Marcos.
The range of accusations that fueled the impeachment complaints include misuse of P612.5 million in her confidential funds of her office and the education department when she headed it until July 2024. She also allegedly amassed wealth beyond her declared income, attempted to destabilize the government and plotted to assassinate the President, first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and former Speaker Martin Romualdez.
She described those accusations as merely “recycled” from her first impeachment by the House last year, which never got to be tried by the Senate after the Supreme Court ruled that it violated a constitutional safeguard prohibiting multiple impeachment proceedings against the same official within a one-year period.
Her lawyer, Paul Lawrence Lim, said the evidence presented in the justice committee hearings failed to establish sufficient basis for the charges against her.
In a statement on Thursday, Lim said the allegations of inciting to sedition and grave threats were supported by “curated” and even “spliced” video materials, with key context allegedly ignored and “publicly reveals the paucity of the charges against her.”
“Opinion is substituted for facts. Guesswork is presented as investigation results,” he added, arguing that these could not serve as the basis for probable cause or a prima facie case.
During Wednesday’s justice panel hearing, the National Bureau of Investigation submitted an affidavit of its investigation of the alleged death threats against Mr. Marcos, his wife and the former Speaker made by Duterte during an online press in November 2024.
The video and the audio recordings of the vice president making the threat, which were played several times during the hearing, were authenticated by the NBI. The NBI officials testified under oath that these were neither edited nor AI-made.
Lim said allegations that Duterte made the alleged death threats required a “gigantic leap in logic” and disregarded basic evidentiary principles.
“The non-existent connection to the Vice President is posed as a mystery still under investigation with no immediate answer, but strategically implies guilt. This excites judgment without evidence,” Lim said.
Lim described the House panel proceedings as a “fishing expedition” to lend credibility to what he described as “defective impeachment complaints” against his client.
