The criminal charges set to be filed against leaders of the House of Representatives, including Speaker Martin Romualdez, are nothing but a “feeble attempt” to discredit the chamber amid the looming impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, administration allies said Sunday.
Deputy Majority Leader Paolo Ortega V and Assistant Majority Leader Jefferson Khonghun — both staunch critics of Duterte — described the effort as “politically motivated,” aimed at undermining the House leadership after impeaching the VP on Wednesday with 215 signatories to the complaint.
“The [cases they will file] are baseless, fantasy and fiction. The obvious purpose is to divert public attention from the real issue — the impeachment trial of VP Duterte,” Ortega said in Filipino. “They should not use Speaker Romualdez as a cover to escape responsibility.”
Duterte allies — former Speaker and now Davao Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez; Atty. Jimmy Bondoc and Atty. Raul Lambino of PDP Laban; and Atty. Ferdinand Topacio — and the non-government organization Citizen Crime Watch are expected to file a case for falsification of legislative documents today, Monday, in relation to the blunder on the bicameral conference committee report on this year’s national budget.
The respondents include Romualdez, House Majority Leader Manuel Jose “Mannix” Dalipe, former House appropriations committee chairperson and Ako Bicol Rep. Elizaldy Co, among others.
The complainants accused the House leaders of being responsible for the “blank items” in the bicam report, which were later filled with a whopping P241 billion in appropriations. They claimed that the amount was illegally inserted since it was added after the bicam report had already been ratified.
“The correct thing to have done was to keep the blanks as blanks because this is what Congress ratified. But instead, they did the exact opposite. They illegally inserted amounts worth P241 billion. This is not a correction; this is an unauthorized insertion that violated the Revised Penal Code,” Topacio said.
Article 170 of the Revised Penal Code defines falsification of legislative documents as when a person, without proper authority, alters a bill or resolution enacted, approved, or pending approval by either House of Congress.
Earlier, appropriations panel acting chair Stella Quimbo explained that the supposed blank items were only for the final computation and were merely ministerial on the part of the technical staff, which was explicitly authorized by the bicam panel.
Khonghun, however, took issue with the suspicious timing of the filing of the alleged charges, calling it a “desperate move to discredit the impeachment process.”
“The issue was very timely. When the impeachment complaint was sent to the Senate, suddenly, there was this action against Speaker Romualdez... Speaker Romualdez has been instrumental in ensuring that the rule of law is followed, and now he is being targeted to weaken the case against VP Duterte,” Khonghun argued.
It was former President Rodrigo Duterte and Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab, erstwhile chairperson of the appropriations committee, who raised red flags about the alleged missing amounts in the bicam report of the 2025 national budget.
Ungab and senatorial aspirant Vic Rodriguez, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s former executive secretary and now allied with the Dutertes, have questioned the legality of this year’s General Appropriations Act before the Supreme Court.
Earlier, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who was named among the respondents, asserted that the Palace could not be held liable as they had no hand in the bicam report, a matter he claimed was internal to Congress.
Nonetheless, Bersamin maintained that there were no blank items in the enrolled budget bill, the version forwarded to Marcos for his signature.