By Tony Lopez
Plunder. Perfidy. Political assassination.
These are the three major crimes committed by impeached Vice President Sara Z. Duterte, against the people. They are very grave, not silly, charges. The evidence is so compelling only a dog or a rat will believe she is not guilty.
Which is why VP Sara must be tried, forthwith, by the Senate acting as the High Court of Impeachment (HCI) of the 20th Congress which began life noon of July 1, 2025.
Plunder is stealing tax money, people’s money, our money, to the tune of P50 million, minimum. Some people say the minimum is now P75 million, thanks to inflation and greed.
“Any public officer who, by himself or in connivance with members of his family, relatives by affinity or consanguinity, business associates, subordinates or other persons, amasses, accumulates or acquires ill-gotten wealth through a combination or series of overt or criminal acts as described in Section 1(d) hereof in the aggregate amount or total value of at least Fifty million pesos (P50,000,000.00) shall be guilty of the crime of plunder and shall be punished by reclusion perpetua to death,” says Republic Act 7080.
Death to plunder. That’s the penalty under the Ombudsman law. Before the HCI however, the penalty is only removal from office and permanent disqualification from holding public office.
In her first two years as VP, Duterte wasted P612.5 million in ghost or fictitious expenses. As confidential funds. She spent P1.454 million, PER DAY, as rental for safehouses that do not exist, or P16 million in 11 days, in 2022. In the first three quarters of 2023, she spent P375 million as rentals for the bogus safehouses.
In Q4 of 2022, the Commission on Audit disallowed P73.287 million she appropriated for non-confidential activities and expenses “and therefore, malversed”.
Separately, to account for P254.898 million of missing confidential funds as VP and DepEd secretary, Sara submitted, under oath, spurious names— after restaurants, snacks, Filipino dishes, patriotic Filipinos. Of 1,992 names alleged recipients of her confidential funds, 1,322 had no birth records, fictitious.
At DepEd, to juggle or steal funds, Sara did acts humanly impossible. On March 15, 2023, in the course of a working day, eight hours, ONE person, her disbursement officer, distributed P1.37 million to 26 payees located in places so far apart you need a plane, or Superman himself, to go there—Pasay, Cavite, Laguna, to as far north as Ifugao, eastern Visayas like Samar, and south to Mindanao as Zamboanga del Sur. In one day.
At DepEd, 677 names were submitted as alleged recipients of P43.249 million of Sara’s confidential funds.
Of the 677 names, 405 were certified by the PSA (Philippine Statistics Authority) as fictitious. Meaning the money was stolen.
Sara is also accused of bribery, graft, unexplained wealth.
Perfidy is when you violate the trust people reposed in you, or betrayal of public trust, in the language of the Constitution.
Betrayal of public trust are acts or offenses that make an impeachable official unfit to hold office.
As to political assassination, the evidence is there for everyone to see. On national tv in the early morning of Nov. 23, 2024, she brazenly declared that she had contracted an unnamed person to kill the President, the First Lady, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the event of her death, with instructions for the said assassin to persist until these persons were dead. “No joke, no joke,” she said.
“Ah wag ka mag-alala ma’am sa security ko, kasi may kinausap na ako na tao. Sinabi ko sa kanya, kapag pinatay ako, patayin mo si BBM, si Liza Araneta at si Martin Romualdez. No joke, no joke. Nagbilin na ako, ma’am. Pag namatay ako, sabi ko, wag kang tumigil ha hanggang hindi mo mapatay po sila. And then he said, yes.”
Narrates the House’s articles of impeachment:
“Respondent Duterte admits two (2) things – First, that she has specifically directed a person to kill the President, the First Lady, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Second, that the contracted person has already agreed to carry out her instruction. In other words, there is a contract to kill.”
“These statements, which came in the heels of respondent Duterte’s prior disclosure that she had previously found herself wanting to behead the President, so alarmed the nation that it was immediately treated as an “active threat”, prompting the Presidential Security Command to heighten the security of the President, and led the National Bureau of Investigation to immediately commence an investigation. “
“…news of a sitting Vice-President, spewing expletives and publicly admitting that she has set in motion a clear plot to assassinate the sitting President was so outrageous and unprecedented that it made its way around the globe with news outlets from various countries.”
“Duterte’s resort to death threats against President Marcos, Jr., and her act of contracting an assassin to carry out such threat, were also backed up by her father, former President Rodrigo R. Duterte. On November 25, 2024, or a mere few days after respondent Duterte gloated about having a “contract to kill’ in place against President Marcos, Jr., her father also issued a call to the military and police to intervene and prodded them to support respondent Duterte and not President Marcos, Jr. whom he libelously referred to as a “drug addict”, in a clear attempt to prompt a coup d’etat against the sitting administration.”
Sara’s reply to the allegations above:
— The Articles of Impeachment are void ab initio; they violate the one-year bar rule—only one impeachment against the same official within one year;
— No statements of ultimate facts; it is nothing more than “a scrap of paper”.
— A clear abuse of the impeachment process.