MANILA – The House of Representatives has impeached Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio after securing more than one-third of its members’ signatures on Wednesday morning.
During the plenary session on Wednesday afternoon, 215 of the 308-member chamber has endorsed the impeachment raps against Duterte-Carpio, moving the process forward to the Senate for trial.
Based on the verified complaint approved by the House plenary, the complainants moved to impeach Duterte-Carpio “based on the grounds of Culpable 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.”
Panay News has reached out to the OVP but has yet to issue a statement as of press time, but in an interview with News 5, Duterte-Carpio said she will comment after reading the verified complaint.
“Mahirap ako mag-react pag hindi ko nabasa kasi kung ano sinabi nila. Gusto ko mabasa kung ano yung statement nila ng House,” Duterte-Carpio said.
Last December, Duterte-Carpio said she welcomed the filing of impeachment complaints against her because only she is the subject of the supposed attacks and do not include her former and current colleagues at the OVP and DepEd.
The Vice President added that the impeachment hearing would also provide her the opportunity to finally answer allegations against her.
“So, okay din ‘yung impeachment case dahil ako lang ang tinitira, ako lang iimbestigahan. Ako lang ang inaatake ng impeachment case,” Duterte-Carpio had said./PN