Lawyer: VP Sara’s impeachment defense ‘addled’
Famed litigation lawyer Lorna Kapunan sought the psychological and psychiatric evaluation of Vice President Sara Duterte because of her remarks on the “strong evidence” presented during the impeachment proceedings at the House of Representatives.
“We should look at the psychological and psychiatric evaluation of a public official. Let’s not even say vice president. Any public official who makes a remark like that is, as I said before, ‘lutang.’ If not ‘lutang,’ then they are not fit for the position,” she said in an interview on radio station dzMM.
The Filipino idiom “lutang” cannot be properly translated to English, but can be considered to be the equivalent of “spaced out” or “addled.”
Kapunan contends that the strongest grounds for Duterte’s impeachment are the Anti-Money Laundering Council’s (AMLC) report on the P6.77 billion in flagged transactions in her and her husband’s bank accounts.
The second are the grave threats she publicly made against President Marcos, first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and former Speaker Martin Romualdez.
“The one that cannot be denied is the AMLC, the Amla (Anti-Money Laundering Act) report, because of the inflow and outflow of funds. It’s just arithmetic. How can they say that the Amla, over the years—about 19 to 20 years—falsified the figures entering the account, leaving the account, and the balance for 20 years? That’s difficult. So the Amla issue is strong,” she said.
However, Duterte’s Statements of assets, liabilities and net worth show a declared net worth of only P88.4 million, with no explicit disclosure of cash on hand or bank deposits for six consecutive years since 2019.
Kapunan said Duterte’s televised remarks during a press conference in November 2024 was equally damning and difficult to retract.
“So that ground is very strong. I will add that the anger of a vice president is very clear, not just hers, but also that of her siblings. They will say it is a conditional threat, colleagues, but there is no such thing as a conditional threat. A threat is a threat,” Kapunan said in Filipino.
The lawyer also dismissed attempts by the Duterte camp to frame the threats as conditional or rhetorical, pointing out that the vice president was visibly angry during the press conference when she said she had already instructed a hit man that if she were killed, he was to kill the first couple and Romualdez.
