VICE President Sara Z. Duterte will be impeached by the House of Representatives on Monday on the basis of strong evidence or on what the people want, Manila Rep. Joel Chua said Saturday.
“Wala akong duda na mai-impeach siya. Napakalas ng ebidensiya. Puwera dun, ang public opinion ay di pabor sa kanya. Kaya saan mo man ibatay ang boto mo, tulog, bagsak si VP,” Chua, the chairman of the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability, said.
Chua, a lawyer and a member of the House Committee on Justice, was reacting to a survey by WR Numero showing that four in 10 Filipinos want House members to vote according to what the majority of Filipinos want.
This is higher than the three in 10 who said the vote must be based on evidence.
Chua said previous surveys showed that most Filipinos want the vice president to face a Senate trial.
“Aside from the preponderance of strong grounds to impeach VP Duterte, what makes the vice president’s situation worse is her and her lawyers’ efforts to belittle and even ridicule the solid evidence against her,” Chua said.
“Her decision to stay away from the House impeachment proceedings did not help her any. The narrative became on-sided: that she transgressed the Constitution, for which she should be removed from the vice presidency and perpetually disqualified from returning to public office,” he said.
The House Committee on Justice has consolidated six to seven impeachment charges contained in the two consolidated impeachment complaints into four articles of impeachment.
The House is expected to take a plenary vote on Monday on the committee report and an accompanying resolution and the articles of impeachment and send them to the Senate.
Chua said among the strongest grounds for impeaching the Vice President are those relating to her alleged unexplained wealth, failure to declare certain assets in her statements of assets, liabilities and net worth, and the threats she made against President Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos and former Speaker Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez.
“The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) report on the bank transactions of the vice president and her husband and the authenticated assassination threat videos don’t lie, no matter how they try to belittle these pieces of evidence,” he said.
Based on the AMLC report submitted to the panel, banks had flagged a total of P6.77 billion in “covered and suspicious” transactions the Vice President and her husband made over a 20-year period.
The council reported that of the P6.77 billion, “inflows” amounted to P4.4 billion, while “outlaws” totaled P1.55 billion.
The figures made Bicol Saro Party-list Rep. Terry Ridon conclude that there was a balance of P2.8 billion in the Vice President’s bank accounts.
On Monday, Atty. Peter Paul Danao, speaking for the camp of Atty. Manases Carpio said that the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) clarified the reported “P2 billion” amount was in fact “P2 million,” supposedly caused by a “system glitch.”
Over the same 20-year period, the vice president’s net worth, based on her SALNs, climbed from P7 million to P88 million.
She declared no “cash on hand and in bank” in her SALNs for six years, from 2019 to 2024.
