MANILA – Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio expressed confidence that she would hurdle the impeachment complaint filed by the House of Representatives before the Senate.
Interviewed in Cebu City on Tuesday, Duterte-Carpio said her lawyers are optimistic that they can answer all the allegations against her.
“Sinasabi ng mga lawyers, they are more than confident na mananalo sila sa impeachment (case). Ako naman, I am most confident with the lawyers working on my impeachment case,” Duterte-Carpio said.
Duterte-Carpio was impeached by the House of Representatives 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
