It has now become obviously transparent that cousins Ferdinand R. Marcos and Speaker Martin Romualdez are behind the plot to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte.
The indubitable proof surfaced with the signing of the articles of impeachment in the last few minutes before the House of Representatives adjourned to start off with the midterm elections in May. Presidential son and Congressman Sandro Marcos was the first to sign the document thus altogether negating President Marcos pronouncements that he is against the impeachment of Vice President Sara.
Marcos and Romualdez along with their confreres in the HoR aimed to convict the Vice President on the following charges:
- Publicly threatening to assassinate BBM, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and Romualdez;
- Malversing P612.5 million in confidential funds with questionable liquidations;
- Bribery and corruption of DepEd Usec. Gloria Jumamil Mercado, bids and awards committee member Resty Osias, chief accountant Rhunna Catalan, and special disbursing officer Edward Fajarda;
- Unexplained, undisclosed fourfold wealth increase from 2007 to 2017;
- Involvement in extrajudicial killings in Davao City;
- Destabilization, insurrection, and public disorder in calling for BBM’s resignation, and obstructing congressional inquiries by ordering subordinates to snub subpoenas.
We do not want to comment on the assassination threat which to us partakes of hyperbole but the rest of the issues borders on the absurd and ignorance.
The House accused the VP on the ₱612-million confidential fund but skirting the issues of various threats on Davao City which ranged from Islamic extremist and CPP/NPA terrorism to drug syndicates. They stonewalled the facts that because of the intelligence apparatus set by the Davao City government terrorist infiltrators among them Jemaah Islamiyah had been neutralized. Crimes and crime syndicates among them the vicious drug syndicates were effectively addressed and solved with the establishment of 911 emergency network. Finally, with the proper implementation of confidential and intelligence funds, communist terrorists that had bedeviled Davao City for decades, had been eradicated making Davao City the first in the country to be declared insurgents free by the Armed Forces of the Philippines. These facts are what the CPP/NPA legal fronts in Congress are mad at Vice President Sara Duterte. But Davao City having been cited as the second safest and most livable metropolis in Southeast Asia should argue against that.
Some lawmakers also atrociously displayed their ignorance by comparing Makati City, with lesser CIF despite its size, to that of Davao City not knowing that Davao City is larger than the entire national capital region.
They questioned the “wealth” of VP Sara and her husband who still lived in an old subdivision in Davao City, but the accusers are mum over the despicable distribution of people’s taxes via Ayuda, AKAP and recently in the unconscionable allocations of extra funds in billions from the questionable General Appropriation Act for the legislators.
Involvement in the extra-judicial killings? This is a recycled issue courtesy of former Commission of Human Rights Chair Leila de Lima who was later appointed as Justice Secretary and later elected Senator all in the span of 20 years plus.
Of late in an interview with Journalist Sheila Coronel of the Philippine Center of Investigative Journalism she claimed that as chair of the CHR in 2009, she held hearings in Davao, vowing to end vigilante-style killings. She also said that her team began exhuming bodies buried in the Laud quarry but could not proceed because a Davao judge denied them a search warrant.
That she held hearings in Davao City relative to the alleged EJK is true. But to claim that “her team began exhuming bodies” as if to mean that they found remains of several victims of EJK is a brazen lie.
The fact is she prejudged the independence of the judges is Davao and therefore obtained search warrants from a Regional Trial Court in Manila. She also doubted the integrity of the NBI, CIDG, Davao City Police and even the personnel of CHR in the region and therefore recruited the members of her team from their main headquarters in Manila.
Her team dug for days, weeks and months but never found a single piece of evidence. What she did not disclose to Ms. Coronel is that later, they cordoned the last burial site, found a badly deteriorated skeletal remains which could have predated World War II. Unknown to her, pictures of their activity were taken, including how the bones were collected including pairs of license plates which have not even oxidized. She and her team hurriedly brought the finds to the Regional Trial Court in Manila but these were rejected by the Court which considered them inadmissable pieces of evidence.
De Lima had always tied EJK with the Davao Death Squad which she claimed was organized by then Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and now in the instant impeachment case linked VP Sara. The fact is, DDS was conceptualized by Integrated National Police Col. Dionisio Tan-gatue Jr sometime in the early 1980s. A phantom force, it was meant to scare and be a deterrent to the “Sparrows”, the vicious NPA liquidation squad who hunted policemen, members of civilian home defense force and local thugs. Sara, who stands accused for her involvement in EJK and DDS was still in a kindergarten school then.
Destabilization? Again that is an unwritten fairy tale.
