Sara Duterte Faces Fresh Impeachment Try In Philippines

Congresswoman Leila de Lima, a former senator who was jailed by Sara's father for opposing his drug war, said that the House justice committee reviewed“voluminous documentary evidence” and heard testimonies that pointed to Sara Duterte's culpability.

“It was clear what we heard. We saw evidence of misuse and abuse of confidential funds amounting to hundreds of millions of pesos. We heard testimony regarding questionable disbursements, fictitious identities, and liquidation documents with indications of falsehood and falsification. We examined evidence of unexplained wealth and billions in suspicious and covered transactions that are manifestly disproportionate to declared and known lawful income,” she told the House plenary.

“We confronted deeply disturbing threats and inflammatory rhetoric that target not only ranking public officials but attack the very heart of our constitutional order,” de Lima said.

What was alleged were not“isolated or random incidents,” she said, but are“habits of abuse of power.”

“These are matters that go into the integrity, accountability, and fitness of a public official occupying the second-highest position in our government,” de Lima said.“The constitutional process of accountability could not move forward if we shirked our duties in this House, if we dropped the ball in this plenary.”
Monday's dramatic episode is the latest in a heightening feud between two of the Southeast Asian nation's leading political clans. Sara Duterte teamed up with Ferdinand Marcos Jr in the 2022 elections to corner the Philippines' top two political spots.

But the alliance soon crumbled, and Marcos allowed Sara's father, Rodrigo, to be arrested and sent to The Hague to face the International Criminal Court (ICC), for thousands of deaths in his drug war.

Apart from allegations of misusing huge state funds, Sara Duterte, is also accused of directly threatening Marcos by saying she had hired an assassin to kill him and his wife if she too were slain.

Meanwhile, at the Senate, one of its members, Sen. Ronald dela Rosa, a former police chief who enforced Duterte's drug war with deadly efficacy, appeared Monday to participate in the coup.