MANILA – Malacañang denied that President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. will push for the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio in the next Congress.
According to Presidential Communications Office’s Undersecretary Claire Castro, there is no truth to rumors that President Marcos will pursue Duterte-Carpio’s ouster.
“Wala pong balita kaugnay sa pag-pursue ng Pangulo sa impeachment or impeachment trial ni VP Sara,” Castro said in a media briefing at Malacañang on Wednesday.
“’Yan po ay ating tinututulan at pinasisinungalingan, wala pong sinasabing pagkumpiyansa upang mapatalsik o matanggal sa puwesto ang bise presidente,” she added.
President Marcos has previously suggested to the members of the House of Representatives not to push through with the impeachment complaint against Duterte-Carpio as it is just a “waste of time”.
However, it was his son, Ilocos Norte’s 1st District representative Sandro Marcos, who spearheaded the signing of the impeachment raps that has been transmitted to the Senate earlier this year.
Duterte-Carpio was impeached by the House on charges of “violation of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust, graft and corruption, and other high crimes.”
The impeachment complaint stemmed from the House good government and public accountability panel’s inquiry on the use of confidential funds by the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) under Duterte-Carpio’s leadership.
The inquiry found that the two offices submitted acknowledgement receipts with wrong dates, signatories with no birth records, unnamed signatories and non-readable names of signatories to liquidate disbursed confidential funds to the Commission of Audit (COA).
It also found that the COA issued a notice of disallowance on the OVP’s use of P73 million confidential funds within 11 days in 2022. At least P69 million of the P73 million disallowed involved the following: P10 million for reward payment; P34.857 million for payment of reward (various goods); and P24.93 million for payment of reward (medicines).
The COA said the OVP did not submit documents showing the success of information gathering and/or surveillance activities to support the acknowledgment receipts for around P69 million of payments of rewards in cash, various goods, and medicines.
Likewise, COA said that P3.5 million of the disallowed P73 million “were used for payment for tables, chairs, desktop computers and printers without specifying that they were intended for the confidential operations/activities undertaken by the OVP, non-compliant with the requirement of Item 4.8.4 of the Joint Circular governing use of confidential fund.”
Duterte-Carpio, however, questioned the validity and constitutionality of the fourth impeachment complaint that was eventually transmitted by the House of Representatives to the Senate before the Supreme Court.
Aside from Duterte-Carpio’s petition, a group of lawyers also urged the High Court to issue a temporary restraining order against the conduct of the impeachment trial./PN
