By TONY LOPEZ
Betrayal of public trust.
That plainly is the crime, in sum, of Sara Z. Duterte, who will be 46 this May 31.
As vice president and as the secretary of the Department of Education from July 1, 2022 to June 24, 2024, she committed acts that are impeachable.
As vice mayor of Davao City from 20017 to 2010 and city mayor from 2010 to 2022, she displayed a character and behavior that make her unfit to be in a public office, like unexplained wealth and ordering extrajudicial killings.
On Feb. 5, 2025, the House of Representatives sent to the Senate the 33-page, 9,038-word verified complaint for impeachment against Sara Duterte. The complaint cites seven grounds for her conviction, ouster as vice president, and being banned for life from holding any government office. The evidence presented in the suit is damning and convincing. Only the most hardened political criminal will think Sara is not guilty.
This may explain why Senate President Francis Escudero, who was trained in his criminal law at UP, hesitates to proceed “forthwith” with the trial of Sara. The turmoil and political fallout from Sara’s conviction and ouster from her position, will, to use my favorite cliché, be massive. He does not want history to remember him as the Senate president, acting as presiding officer of the Senate Impeachment Court, who convicted the first vice president ever to be impeached.
The charges
The charges against Sara:
1. She contracted an assassin to kill President Marcos Jr., First Lady Louise Araneta Marcos, and Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez. She disclosed so herself on a nationwide TV broadcast, live.
2. She misused and malversed hundreds of millions of confidential funds under the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education.
For instance, in 11 days, from Dec. 21, 2022 to Dec. 31, 2022 (which included four holidays), she malversed P11.363 million, or P1.62 million every working day.
Additionally, as the VP, she spent P1.454 million, DAILY, for the rental and maintenance of safehouses, for a total of P16 million. In the first three quarters of 2023, she spent a uniform P16 million each quarter, for safehouse rentals. The daily rental amounts, (P1.45 million per day) which are more than what you pay for a five-star hotel room for one week, says the House, are “clearly exorbitant, unconscionable and excessive” and “suspicious”. Meaning, the money was pocketed and went missing, and not actually spent on rentals.
Of 1,992 names of persons mentioned by Sara to have received her OVP confidential funds totaling P254 million, 1,322 did not exist or were fictitious names. Another P73.28 million went to non-confidential activities and expenses and were thus disallowed by COA.
Separately, at DepEd, Sara claimed to have spent P15.54 million for Youth Leadership Seminars conducted by the Philippine Army. PA officers, in public hearings of the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accounts, denied having received said amounts. “We spent our own money,” the officers uniformly insisted. In still another instance, Sara claimed to have given P43.24 million of her confidential funds to 677 persons or names; PSA said 405 of the names do not have birth records.
Plunder
Such acts, says the House, constitute plunder. By law, plunder is stealing a minimum of P50 million. Plunder is also a series of acts of stealing.
3. Bribery. Secretary Sara distributed huge sums to DepEd officials who were involved in bidding and procurement.
The impeachment articles say her law school batchmate and classmate, Reynold Munsayac, “sought to rig the bidding of the DepEd computerization program”.
4. Unexplained wealth. Despite having a salary of only P2 million to P2.4 million per year, as Davao vice mayor, during 2007 to 2017, Sara’s real assets increased from P10.42 million to P30.54 million, triple; personal assets, from P5.47 million to P20.59 million, up 276%, or almost quadruple; and net worth, from P13.87 million to P44.82 million, up 223% or more than triple.
5. Conspiracy to commit murder. As Davao mayor, she “personally gave the green light for DDS killing spree, or Operation Tokhang”, with a directive to bury the victims in mass graves in the Laud Quarry.
While this alleged crime was committed when Sara was mayor and therefore, she was not an impeachable officer, it shows character or unfitness to hold public office.
6. Political destabilization, sedition, and insurrection. She “committed acts tending to destabilize the government, challenge the authority of the President, promote blatant disregard for orderly governance and incite sedition and utter disrespect for public authority”.
Guilty
This early, public opinion says VP Sara is guilty.
In six months last year, she suffered a massive erosion in her trust ratings, according to the usually reliable pollster Pulse Asia, from 71% much trust in March 2024 to 61% in September 2024, a drop of 10 percentage points in just six months, and five months before the Feb. 5, 2025 filing of the impeachment complaint against her before the Senate. Assuming a voting population of 70 million, a ten percentage-point drop translates into seven million Filipinos losing their trust in you. That’s bad.
By December 2024, per Pulse Asia, Sara’s big trust rating fell further to 49%, a decline of 22 percentage points or 15.4 million Filipinos losing totally, their total trust in her. Put another way, today, 51 of every 100 Filipinos no longer trust Sara, up from 29 of every 100 having no trust in the VP in March 2024.
A Tangere survey found nearly three of four Filipinos or 73% believe Sara should be tried by the Senate for plotting to kill the President, the First Lady, and Speaker Martin.
SP Chiz Escudero. Your move. Forthwith.