Shaky start
As opening moves go, this is hardly the confident start one might have expected, especially after weeks of preparation.
The impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte resumed this week, and after months of prosecution testimony and a break of several weeks, it is finally the defense’s turn. And things are already looking a little awkward.
The prosecution has gone all in on Article II, involving alleged unexplained wealth. Its final witness, forensic accountant and lawyer Alexander Cabrera, pulled together SALNs, tax returns, bank records and corporate filings, then testified that Duterte and her husband, Mans Carpio, had P817.87 million in allegedly undeclared assets and income from 2022 to 2025.
And this was his conservative estimate.
For perspective, former Chief Justice Renato Corona was convicted by the Senate in 2012, by a vote of 20 to 3, after failing to disclose bank deposits amounting to around P80.7 million and $2.4 million in his SALNs.
The two cases are not identical. Cabrera’s figure involves the financial records of both spouses and remains disputed testimony, not an established judicial finding. But the comparison makes one thing clear: an alleged discrepancy of this magnitude cannot simply be laughed off as political persecution.
Naturally, there has been much speculation over how the defense intends to answer it. Will it bring in its own forensic accountant? Will it demonstrate that Cabrera counted assets twice, misread corporate records or attributed wealth to the wrong people? Those would be substantive answers worth hearing. What we have seen so far, however, has been somewhat unimpressive.
The defense initially named constitutional law professor and former dean Ralph Sarmiento as its first witness and asked the impeachment court to subpoena him. Sarmiento responded publicly that he did not wish to testify, citing his desire to preserve the independence of his scholarship and the impartiality of his legal opinions. The defense subsequently withdrew its request.
That is certainly his prerogative. But surely counsel should establish that a prospective witness is willing to testify before putting his name forward as the opening act.
Then came word that another intended witness, lawyer Suzette Balucanag-Punay, corporate counsel for GenCorp Industries, could not appear as scheduled on 9 November because of a previously scheduled MRI examination. Her testimony may instead proceed on Wednesday.
A medical appointment is a perfectly legitimate reason to seek a change of schedule. One reluctant witness and one postponed appearance do not prove that the defense has no case. Indeed, its submitted list includes numerous bank officers and local officials.
Still, as opening moves go, this is hardly the confident start one might have expected, especially after weeks of preparation.
And this all comes after the Senate impeachment court admitted most of the prosecution’s financial evidence, including much of Cabrera’s analysis, while excluding certain corporate records and related computations.
Admission does not mean the senator-judges have accepted his conclusions. That still has to be decided. But with the admission of this documentary evidence, which the defense has strenuously opposed, the prosecution gained more ground.
The defense has every right to challenge those conclusions, and we should hear its answers before judging them. With the defense presenting its witnesses, the questions stop being hypothetical.
The prosecution has laid out its numbers, and they are definitely compelling. Let’s see whether the defense can make them add up differently.