MANILA, Philippines – The coalition of civic organizations that initiated the filing of an impeachment complaint against her on Monday, December 2, spared no controversy in trying to have Vice President Sara Duterte removed from office.
The group of 16 complainants, whose designated spokesperson is former senator Leila de Lima, invoked 24 articles of impeachment, under at least four grounds listed in the 1987 Constitution.
These are:
- Culpable violation of the Constitution; graft and corruption
- Article 1: Duterte’s supposed failure to account for P125 million in confidential funds of the Office of the Vice President in 2022
- Article 2: Duterte’s supposed failure to account for the P150 million and P500 million in confidential and intelligence funds that the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) received in 2023
- Article 3: Duterte’s refusal to answer questions surrounding her proposed OVP budget for 2025 and her handling of DepEd funds in the previous years during House proceedings
- Article 4: Her supposed squandering of P2.735 billion in secret funds during her three terms as Davao City mayor
- Article 5: Her attempt to request a total of P650 million in secret funds for her offices for 2024, which would have continued “her pattern of abuse and squandering of public funds”
- Article 6: The P12 billion in disallowances, suspensions, and charges she left DepEd with
- Article 7: The P7 billion in unliquidated cash advances she left DepEd with
- Article 8: The P15.4 billion in unutilized funds she left DepEd with in 2023
- Article 9: The alleged rigged bidding of laptops and other ICT materials during the Duterte-led DepEd
- Bribery; culpable violation of the Constitution
- Article 10: Her alleged ill-gotten wealth and laundering of P111 million in funds, deposited in her personal account, and hundreds of millions of pesos deposited in an account she held jointly with her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, from 2007 to 2015
- Article 11: Her and her family’s alleged involvement in bribery, through the supposed unexplained receipt of hundreds of millions of funds from drug personalities
- Article 12: Her supposed failure to reflect the questionable bank deposits in her Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth
- Article 13: Her alleged illegal practice of her profession as a lawyer, when she maintained a law office while she is vice president
- Betrayal of public trust
- Article 14: Abandonment of Super Typhoon Carina victims, when she traveled to Germany at the height of the storm
- Article 15: Duterte’s failure to condemn Chinese aggression in the West Philippine Sea
- Other high crimes
- Article 16: Duterte’s supposed direct involvement in the extrajudicial killings in Davao City when she was mayor from 2011 to 2013, and from 2016 to 2022
- Article 17: Her implied threat to attendees of the State of the Nation Address, when she called herself the “designated survivor“
- Article 18: Gross incompetence and dereliction of duty during her second term as Davao City mayor, despite “enormous resources available”
- Article 19: Her defense of sex trafficking and child abuse defendant Apollo Quiboloy
- Article 20: Her act of “throwing a tantrum” when 75 police personnel once assigned to her were recalled
- Article 21: Her supposed unexplained wealth, as reflected in her SALNs from 2007 to 2017
- Article 22: Her and her family’s alleged receipt of substantial funds from drug personalities
- Article 23: Duterte’s public meltdown on October 18, when she threatened to dig up the corpse of dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos and throw it into the West Philippine Sea, and when she claimed she once imagined decapitating the incumbent president
- Article 24: Duterte’s admission that she asked an assassin to kill President Marcos, First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos, and Speaker Martin Romualdez, if she were to be killed
– Rappler.com