Catholic priests and civic leaders have filed an impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte, accusing her of misusing confidential funds allocated to the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd).
The complaint was filed on Thursday at the Philippine House of Representatives by Atty. Amando Virgil Ligutan, representing the complainants.
Six priests from the Diocese of Novaliches, Order of Carmelites, and Congregation of Mission, and leaders from Stand up for God Rosary Group joined the filing of the rap.
“We are citing culpable violation of the Constitution,” Ligutan told reporters in Manila. “We are also invoking betrayal of public trust, plunder, malversation, technical malversation and bribery.”
“The complainants are arguing that it is no longer just a constitutional, and legal obligation of the members of Congress to impeach, or remove the Vice President,” Ligutan said. “The obligation becomes a moral one.”
Ligutan also said Duterte failed to present proof of payment of rewards, or evidence of accomplishment of her data gathering.
Fr. Joselito Sarabia, one of the complaints who joined its filing on Thursday, expressed conviction that Duterte is guilty.
"We believe VP Sara committed something illegal and something immoral against the Filipino people,” he said. For us, thou shall not kill, thou shall not steal, thou shall not bear false witness.”
The impeachment complaint, which is the third filed against Duterte, was based on the findings of the Philippine House of Representatives committee on good government and public accountability.
The committee reported a number of fictitious recipients of confidential funds and discrepancies involving alleged misuse of P125 million at the Office of the Vice President and P112.5 million at the Department of Education.
Duterte has denied allegations of misuse of confidential funds at the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education, where she served as Secretary until July this year.
The Vice President is the daughter of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who threatened Catholic bishops for criticizing his bloody crackdown on drugs (link).
Duterte called the bishops “useless fools” and should be “killed.”
According to the Human Rights Watch, Duterte’s deadly campaign against drugs claimed the lives of 12,000 Filipinos. At least 2,555 of the deaths are linked to the Philippine National Police (link).
Duterte and the national police admitted in 2019 that drugs in the country even worsened three years after he launched the deadly crackdown (link).
The former president also called God stupid in a televised speech on June 23, 2018 (link).
Observers believed the older Duterte won the 2016 presidential election by disinformation, particularly fake news, to push his bid for the top position in the country.
The massive and coordinated disinformation campaign during the 2016 national elections was the first ever in the history of the Philippine election.
The Department of Justice of the Philippines is currently looking at holding the former president accountable for crimes against humanity for his bloody war on drugs.
Duterte is also being investigated by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
Radio Veritas Asia (RVA), a media platform of the Catholic Church, aims to share Christ. RVA started in 1969 as a continental Catholic radio station to serve Asian countries in their respective local language, thus earning the tag “the Voice of Asian Christianity.” Responding to the emerging context, RVA embraced media platforms to connect with the global Asian audience via its 21 language websites and various social media platforms.
Latest News
