THE testimony of Ramil L. Madriaga gives the House Committee on Justice a disturbing look at how public money may have been moved in ways that bypassed the normal safeguards of accountability, according to a lawmaker who said the allegations are too serious to brush aside as mere noise or technical theater.
Manila Rep. Bienvenido “Benny” Abante, an endorser of the fourth impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Z. Duterte, raised that point in a manifestation before the justice panel as it weighed the significance of Madriaga’s affidavit and the need to press further into the facts.
“Madriaga’s testimony provides a chilling look into the movement of public funds that circumvented every known audit safeguard,” Abante, chair of the House Committee on Human Rights, said.
He argued that the committee cannot treat the affidavit as stray accusation because the House rules, read together with the Rules of Court, require members to examine the recital of facts and the evidence supporting the complaint.
“If these allegations are true, we are looking at the literal conversion of the public treasury into duffel bags for private distribution,” Abante stressed.
Abante then tied that warning to the need for clarificatory questions, saying the committee’s power to compel witnesses and documents is not ornamental but central to the constitutional task before it.
“This is why clarificatory questions are not just a procedural right—they are a constitutional necessity,” Abante pointed out.
He said the panel must directly confront the strange details in the affidavit, especially the alleged use of duffel bags and car tire key drops if the transactions were supposedly lawful.
“Bakit kailangang dumaan ang pera sa duffel bag at car tire keys kung legal ito?” Abante asked.
He also zeroed in on the issue of confidential funds, particularly the question of how the Office of the Vice President could justify the disbursement of P125 million in just 11 days for supposed safehouses tied to names that the PSA itself has cast into doubt.
“How can the OVP justify spending P125 million in just 11 days on ‘safehouses’ for payees that the PSA says do not exist?” Abante said.
From there, he turned to the criticism that the House was supposedly engaged in a fishing expedition or a mini-trial, saying such claims confuse the committee’s threshold function with the Senate’s role as impeachment court.
“Let’s be clear: we are not here to convict; we are here to determine a threshold,” Abante stated.
He said the House is not sitting to pronounce guilt but to determine whether there is enough basis for the constitutional process to move forward.
“Determination of probable cause is a constitutional mandate, not a legal distraction,” Abante argued.
Abante sharpened that point further by saying accountability cannot be dismissed as “fishing” when the allegations already identify specific transactions, fund movements and actors that demand examination.
“Kapag sinundan mo ang bakas ng pera ng bayan, ang tawag doon ay oversight, hindi ‘fishing,’” Abante said.
He added that if the Vice President’s records are indeed clean, subpoenas and questions should be seen not as persecution but as a chance to clear the air.
“If the Vice President’s records are clear, a subpoena should be a welcome opportunity for transparency, not a reason for panic,” Abante noted.
On Madriaga himself, Abante rejected efforts to disqualify the witness outright over the cases he faces, saying the law distinguishes between a witness’s legal competence to testify and the committee’s separate duty to weigh his credibility.
“Kung presumed innocent si VP Sara—eh di presumed innocent din si Ramil Madriaga,” Abante said.
He then drew the line in plain terms, saying competency is a legal question that can be answered now, while credibility is something the committee must test through the hearing itself.
“Yung competency—pwede ba siyang tumestigo? The answer is a legal YES. Yung credibility—kapani-paniwala ba siya? That is for this Committee to weigh,” Abante explained.
Abante closed by saying the House is not being asked to convict the Vice President now, but to confront whether the smoke described in the records and testimony is real enough to warrant the next constitutional step.
“Transparency is not persecution. Questions are not convictions. And accountability is not harassment—it is the lifeblood of a functioning democracy,” Abante said.
